All My Memories
by Dgcakes
Summary: With Venjix temporarily out of commission, the team can focus on getting Dillon's memories back. But will they get more than they bargained for when new information turns up on a secret government agency in league with Alphabet Soup? Slash, Femslash, AU
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** Just a lil' fun fanfic I've been talking about with my friends and threw together for them. I apologize if my writing is terrible or my plots are ridiculous.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Power Rangers or any related media or characters. The story idea is my own but the rest isn't. Everything is copyrighted to its respective owners.

If you review, it'll make me smile and I'll try to respond to positive ones or questions here.

**WARNING!:** This fic will contain slash, femslash and possibly even some het (le gasp). Nothing m-rated, mind you, but it will contain pairings. Please keep this in mind. Pairings included are Dillon/Ziggy, Flynn/Gemma, Scott/Summer, Tenaya/Dr. K.

**WARNING 2!: **Contains some spoilers for certain plot points in the series, and is slightly AU. I won't be following the series exactly at some points so you have been warned.

* * *

All was quiet in the Garage the Sunday morning on which our story begins. The usual tap-tap-tapping of Dr. K at her keyboard was silenced for a change as she waited with baited breath in the ranger room for some sort of a sign. A response on the com-link, visual, ANYTHING would have been acceptable at this point to tell her what she needed to know. Where were her rangers? Were they all right? Had the mission been a success, and if not, had they made it out with as few casualties as possible?

The dark haired girl rung her hands, much more jumpy than usual about this whole business. While she did try to be somewhat detached with her rangers when it came time for missions like this, Dr. K had to admit she did love them, so to speak, as the only family she had ever had. Her handlers at Alphabet Soup didn't count as family and her no good parents had let her go off to such a horrible place, not caring to even visit their daughter with her supposed 'sun allergy'.

Shaking away thoughts of a life she couldn't quite recall, the raven haired girl went back to twitching around so she could watch all three of the monitors before her that usually displayed the information on her rangers and their current suit powers. Presently, the screens were all searching and waiting for any information on the team's status and whereabouts.

The rangers themselves had been gone for the past week – had it really been that long? - on a discrete and highly dangerous mission into the wastes. The plan was for them to sneak in teams of two and bomb several high level Venjix bases that were helping the virus in his extremely fast paced production of new Attackbots and Grinders. It was a dangerous plan, particularly since the teams would first have to scan for and evacuate any humans that were presently imprisoned, dealing with their safety after the base was destroyed and getting them back to Corinth.

The first signs that things MIGHT be going well appeared within the first three days. A group of humans had been deposited outside of the shield by Flynn, who was the odd man out in the team business. His job was to collect up rescued civilians from the bases and transport them back to Corinth, where a military outpost had been setup to deal with them. Things like scanning for Venjix hardware, providing medical treatment and finding housing for all of these people were a lot of work and Colonel Truman had NOT been pleased when he was told he had to arrange all of it on short notice. He was possibly also displeased about the fact that Dr. K had gone behind his back and sent the rangers – including his son – on a mission that was not only risky but could cripple Corinth's defenses as well, but K paid that no mind.

She'd dared to hope a bit when there weren't any Attackbots sent to the city by the fifth day and a few more groups of evacuees had arrived during the night. The Doctor had been willing to start expecting the team home within a few days – maybe she'd even treat them to a dinner of some sort if they weren't too tired, that was appropriate right? - but things seemed dire when two more days had passed without even a hair heard of them. When Flynn had dropped off the last group of evacuees – looking very tired and worn out from all of the driving and dealing with scared people – he hadn't even stopped to talk, merely gotten a drink, refueled and drove off again. The mechanic usually could be trusted to say SOMETHING – usually very simple and to the point, but it was information none the less. Him being silent was almost as unnerving as Ziggy being silent.

Ah Ziggy, her Ranger Green. He was a hard nut to crack now wasn't he? Dr. K rolled her eyes as she reclined in a chair and wondered about the young man who'd joined her team. It was an odd habit of the young genius to call the team her rangers – Scott was her Ranger Red, Summer her Ranger Yellow and Ziggy her Ranger Green. Their full title was Operator Series Blue, Black or whathaveyou but in attempts to be less cold with her team outside of official missions, K had started trying to call them by their names and give them compliments on jobs well done. A weird change-off from her previous distance with the team, and her coldness when it came time for very risky missions – after all, if she let herself get too emotional about them before something like this, the girl was sure she'd never let any of the rangers out to do their jobs.

Back to Ziggy, he was a much better thing to think about than her own strange quirks. K rolled her eyes at that – sometimes people would joke she was interested in him, but that was not even close to the case. The young man reminded the doctor, well, of someone she couldn't quite remember but wasn't quite sure she wanted to anyway. He was a friendly creature, that was for sure, but not at all bright and not particularly skilled. In fact, his skill level seemed to almost improve incorrectly, never actually getting better no matter what was added to it.

During his year and a half as a Ranger, Dr. K had yet to see more than marginal improvements in Series Green's skill levels. It was as if he was stuck in an impossible rut of dorky comedy relief fighting. No matter how many training sessions he went through with Dillon or Summer or any of the others, the boy just didn't seem to get much better. If he seemed to be learning a ton – always paying rapt attention whenever they took the time to try to help him – his technique never changed. Even though he was obviously doing EXACTLY what they told him to when they told him to, there still seemed a horrible disconnect between his actions and his brain. Instructions didn't seem to go in one ear and out the other – instead, they seemed to go in one ear, get grabbed by his brain, and somewhere during the processing, they escaped rather than being implemented, and that was far worse than his lack of attention.

Scott had become frustrated with this problem rather fast, abandoning any attempts at teaching Ziggy with his hands thrown up and a grouchy shout of defeat on his lips. The team leader took it as quite a blow that he couldn't seem to make one of his subordinates learn how to improve his or her skills. After getting used to the boy being on the team, Scott had been willing to at least try and help out the younger ranger, hoping to get through his thick skull and make him at least semi-competent. However, he hadn't even managed to get the concept of one-liners through Ziggy's thick skull properly, on top of being unable to help him improve his fighting much – the younger male had gotten that they were supposed to be sassy and insulting...but had utterly failed on the concept of them being witty or more than one line. That part was chalked up to him just not being very bright, but after Ziggy also failed several training sessions with Scott, the man had simply given up on the Green Ranger ever being an asset to his team beyond his basic skills.

Summer and Dillon seemed to be the only ones who had the long term patience enough to deal with the youngest ranger when it came to training. Summer was too good natured to give up on the failtastic young man, and had taken to treating him as she would a little brother. Series Black, meanwhile, seemed to have an innate need to protect the moronic stray he'd dragged into the group, and he was also pretty easily amused by Ziggy's stupidity and actions, even if they did try his patience at times. But even with the most patient and the most powerful members of the main team teaching him, Ranger Green STILL had improved very little in his time with them.

On the subject of Dillon, the young genius was pretty sure he might be the only person on the team with close to as many issues as she had – neither of them could rival Gem and Gemma for sheer mental instability, but they did have a lot of things wrong. Neither could remember much of their past – Dillon, because of Venjix stealing his memories, and K because of being brainwashed by the government think tank that raised her. Alphabet Soup may not have ended the world, but they could be just as cold and cruel as the virus they'd had her create and had had unleashed upon them.

K eyed the devices she'd been working on recently with some contempt. Some theorizing had brought the team to the conclusion that Dillon should have his memories back but that they were behind some sort of block. After all, they'd destroyed the Attackbot containing his memories, so they should have returned due to memory not being a purely mechanical construct, a person's brain not being comprised of data and computer chips. The theory had actually been Ziggy's originally and he'd poked at K a lot till she finally took the time to explain to him that yes, the idea was plausible but would require a lot of work, testing and it wasn't easy to come up with that kind of machine from scratch.

By that point, the rest of the team had heard her yelling and when they found out, all hell had broken loose. They may not always get along or see eye-to-eye, but the rangers were a team, and a close-knit one at that, and they looked out for their own. Dillon was family to them and they weren't just going to leave him scrounging for the memories he'd had to give up the chance to get back to save them. When K had brought up how the recovery process from all the testing could leave him out of commission, the group had countered with the idea that with the amount of time she needed to figure out the technology anyway, they could prepare a new morpher and suit for someone else. Well, they mostly meaning Gem, Gemma and herself, but Dr. K was used to working on tons of projects at once and Gem and Gemma had been the ones to help her with the original development of the suits and morphers.

She'd finally been pressured into it by the sheer power of the arguments her team gave – they all felt strongly for the cause and for the need for an extra ranger anyway, so in the end, Dr. K had conceded and begun to work on a new morpher with her the help of her team. That project was going a hell of a lot better than the memory retriever, but in her present agitation, K couldn't work on something so delicate anyway.

The teen's musings had kept her occupied for a while, but once again she was reminded of her desperate and miserable situation. She was alone, jumpy and worried for her team, and with only bad memories and worries, she couldn't even sleep properly to take some of the edge off. Hell, her jumpiness should have left her more paranoid, more alert to sounds that weren't from her computer, but Dr. K was sadly mistaken, as she discovered when a pair of hands clasped over her eyes.

"Guess who, Doc!" the cheery tones of her youngest Ranger echoed in the previously dead quiet Ranger room and K found herself jumping about a mile in the air before smacking Ziggy's hands away.

"Ranger Green! Do you know what kinds of things happen to a person's heartrate when you do things like that to them after such a long period of absence, silence and lack of contact?" she shouted, not even fully noticing her lack of coherence in the last question. K was out of it, and it showed.

"Whoa, whoa, Doc, calm down. I was just trying to cheer you up a bit, you looked pretty down." he assured her with quickly raised hands and even quicker words. Oh yes, she scared the young ranger some days and it was probably a good thing too.

"What you describe as looking 'down' is what happens after more than a week of no sleep, a meager diet and sitting in front of a computer waiting for ANY CONTACT AT ALL FROM MY AWAY TEAM!" the woman was half shouting by the end of her tirade and she'd probably have kept going on that train had she not noticed something else, "You aren't even wearing your morpher? What the hell do you think you're DOING, Series Green?"

Ziggy stared at Dr. K, trying very hard to keep her from blowing up at him before the genius finally got to a question he could honestly answer. "Hey, hey I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be offensive! I was just concerned, yeah? I'm not wearing my Morpher because Scott said not to."

"I cannot imagine why Ranger Red would tell you to do something so foolish." Dr. K said skeptically, shaking her head.

"He said not to wear them because they give off a signal or something when they're on the wrist strap of the owner. So we didn't put a new engine cell in and flip the switch to morph, we kept a new engine cell in the morpher and just put it in the strap and turned it on when we had to morph," the brunette brushed a hand through messy curls as he spoke before pulling his morpher out, removing the engine cell left inside and reattaching it, "S'like trying to save time by leaving the radio on and tuned to the right channel and just pluggin or unpluggin it when you wanna or don't wanna use it instead of turning it on and off."

The small female was not awake enough to deal with this and rested her forehead upon her hands. "Series Green, please stop talking and leave me be. I need to get some rest before the rest of the team gets here...where are they anyway?" The last question was more of an afterthought as she realized that Ziggy had come alone to see her.

He refrained from commenting on how she'd told him to shut up merely moments before asking him something, choosing to just give her a quick answer and make his getaway, "Scott's getting the third degree from his Dad, Flynn and Summer went to pop in on their families before they came back, and Gem and Gemma are helping Dillon with his um...I'll just let you see when they get here." he said quickly before turning and darting upstairs on legs that should not be working that fast after so long out in the wastes doing such intense work. Dr. K'd have almost been suspicious of that were it not Ziggy – his occasionally unbelievable immaturity seemed to also give him an extreme amount of energy and an almost permanent good mood.

That smile had been what really left K suspicious, but not of foul play. No Ziggy only wore that smile when he knew something he considered fun or amusing was going to happen. He tended to wear it most when he was talking about going to do something he enjoyed...or when he happened to be privately grilling the young doctor about her feelings for a certain Venjix human infiltration Attackbot with an extremely long title. She generally didn't enjoy these grilling sessions, but they were good natured and made her feel almost safe, that her odd feelings towards someone she shouldn't at all be interested in, were accepted by at least one of her team. They were her family after all, and their approval did matter at least a little.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note:** Just a lil' fun fanfic I've been talking about with my friends and threw together for them. I apologize if my writing is terrible or my plots are ridiculous.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Power Rangers or any related media or characters. The story idea is my own but the rest isn't. Everything is copyrighted to its respective owners.

If you review, it'll make me smile and I'll try to respond to positive ones or questions here.

**WARNING!:** This fic will contain slash, femslash and possibly even some het (le gasp). Nothing m-rated, mind you, but it will contain pairings. Please keep this in mind. Pairings included are Dillon/Ziggy, Flynn/Gemma, Scott/Summer, Tenaya/Dr. K.

**WARNING 2!: **Contains some spoilers for certain plot points in the series, and is slightly AU. I won't be following the series exactly at some points so you have been warned.

* * *

Debriefing had been hell, Scott thought, slumping onto the couch in the Garage. First his father and then an irate Dr. K, did no one trust him to lead the team efficiently anymore? The good doctor frequently informed Scott that decisions were his call because he was team leader, and yet she would tear him down about those decisions later. The other rangers could be just as bad too – Dillon did whatever he felt like and often mocked Scott's position as leader, and Ziggy was a headache for the Red Ranger to keep in line. Could no one just sit back and be proud and thankful that Scott had not only done his job right, but he'd done it pretty damn well too.

The mission was a complete success, tons of civilians having been rescued from the Venjix bases they'd hit, all of which they managed to blow up before the virus became too aware of just what was going on. They'd kept their morphers off to keep them from being easily detected, and it'd worked brilliantly, for which Scott was glad. When he and Flynn had come up with the idea, both had been a bit worried that removing their morphers like that would cause them to need a reset each time, but Ziggy had been able to vouch for that not being the case. His explanation for how he knew hadn't been clear, but it was enough for them to trust the method for this.

Scott sighed a bit, brushing the sweat away from his face a bit as he tried to get comfortable. The dome's interior weather and temperatures were made to mimic the seasons, including the blistering heat of the summer months. As Scott started to mumble something about hating the summer, a cold drink was pressed against his cheek.

"I'd hope you don't hate me, Scott. That'd make working together awkward." the blonde woman standing over him commented with an amused smirk on her face. She was holding a refrigerated bottle of water in each hand, one of which she was offering to the frazzled team leader.

"Summer! When'd you get in?" the man asked, sitting up quickly to take the offered drink with a smile.

The ranger in question snorted, taking a seat lightly on the arm of the couch her companion had just leaned up from, "I got in while you were in with Dr. K. I came down to check on you after I had a shower. I thought you'd need someone to talk to."

The Red Ranger nodded, looking irritable, "You'd think she'd trust me by now to not screw up something this big! But oh no, Doc K couldn't wait to start laying into me about how we should have found a way to report back, how it was foolish and out of line for me to have you all keep your morphers off!"

Summer shook her head a little, placing a consoling hand on Scott's shoulder, "It's just her way of saying she was worried and we scared her, that's all."

It took just as much patience to deal with Dr. K some days as it took to deal with Ziggy. Their mentor meant well and her heart was in the right place, but social interaction would never be one of her strong suits, and they all knew that. Some days, it was just very hard for someone with a temperament like Scott's to keep from wanting to throttle her. At least he didn't give the poor girl as much lip as Dillon did, Summer thought with a smile.

"I really don't know how you do it, Summer." he grumbled, lightly slumping against his teammate's thigh, and letting her pet his hair lightly. No one was allowed to touch Scott's hair without permission – well, no one except Summer. She just generally was more polite than to touch it when he didn't want her to.

The woman shook her head a bit, smiling and deciding to change the subject, "You know Flynn'll kick us all out of the kitchen and insist on making smoothies for hours soon as he's in. It'll be the first time he'll be able to make a good one without interruption for a while."

Scott chuckled, shaking his head, "With one of those stupid parasols behind his ear the whole time too." he agreed, "How can he do that without feeling awkward about it, I'll never know."

"He's probably just...secure in his masculinity." Summer managed to say that with such a straight face, that they both burst out in laughter afterward.

They sat there, relaxing and chattering about the weather and their teammates, till the sounds of a car pulling into the Garage were heard nearby. Scott would have ignored it in favor of continuing to lament the heat, but then he spotted just what Dillon had brought into their base.

"Oh no. No, no, NO, Dillon! What the HELL are you thinking, man?" Scott demanded to know, immediately jumping up from the couch and storming over to his subordinate, watching in fury and horror as Gem and Gemma escorted a struggling Tenaya Fifteen out of Dillon's car.

The black ranger gave one of his trademark infuriating grins as he addressed Scott's questions, "Good to see you too, glad to see you managed to get a new stick to shove up your ass. For a while there you almost seemed like a decent human being." Dillon promptly pat the other man's arm and brushed past him towards the ranger room after Gem and Gemma, waving at Summer as he went.

"You can't just bring her here, Dillon! You're out of line and you know it!" Ranger Red's throat was starting to become hoarse from all the yelling and his face had taken on a dark flush from both his anger and the heat.

This time, Dillon's response was much more serious, turning to glare at the team captain, "And why the hell not? She's my sister, in case you forgot." the taller man snarled, looking down at his teammate with venom in his gaze.

"Why? Because she's still got that damn virus in her, Dillon. Get it through your damn skull! Doc K may have been able to finally get it out of you, but you haven't been pretty much living with Venjix this whole time! Her antidote may not be strong enough to get rid of it in Tenaya, especially with all he's done to keep her under control!" Scott hollered, grabbing his friend by the collar to try and get his point across.

"We still have to try!" Dillon snarled back through gritted teeth.

Things probably would have continued in this vein, had Flynn not taken that moment to enter the room and stare at the two, shaking his head. "Now, ah dunno abou' you two, bu' ah've always though' it kinda rude to star' flir'in' with anotha' guy while ya girlfrien's sittin' righ' there laddy."

Scott turned to give the blue ranger a flabbergasted look, quite possibly too speechless to say the comment he was thinking about Flynn's pink parasols and frequent smoothie making. His mouth worked a few times before Dillon saved him with a witty comeback and a smirk, "Where else would Summer get her entertainment? Gemma wouldn't share you, and Ziggy and Gem just aren't his type."

Did he think save? No, Dillon was just a horrible person, Scott decided as the black ranger gave him a wink and headed off to check on his sister.

The red ranger grumbled something about weirdos and shook his head, going to sit by Summer once more. "How are you both so cool with this?" he asked, looking between his teammates as they settled down from their laughter at his expense.

Summer shook her head, patting Scott's shoulder again. "There's not much we can do about it now, and if anyone can help Tenaya get back to normal, it's Dr. K. We just have to trust in her and hope for the best."

"I wish it were that simple." the team captain sighed, resting his head against his girlfriend's thigh once more, and looking at Flynn with a bemused expression.

The Scotsman shrugged, "Well, whatever happens, we'll mee'it in the en'. Now, iffya don' min', ah'ma go make m'self summa' cold to drink. Iffya see Gemma, tell her ah'm in the kitchen."

Scott was about to make a snarky comment to that effect before thinking better of it. Flynn was almost through the door before the other ranger leaned up off the couch to call, "Hey, if you're making smoothies, we'll take a couple!" To which he got a handwave that almost always meant yes.

–

Dr. K didn't call them into the lab for a full debriefing till the following afternoon. She'd just been too tired to do more than yell at Scott when he'd first come in – seriously, who let Ziggy come alone to talk to her first? - and the girl just hadn't been in the mood then to deal with giving congratulations or explaining that this merely left Venjix handicapped for a short while. The genius might have called her team in after she was calmed down, but then Gem and Gemma had appeared with Tenaya Fifteen and things had spiraled down from there. She'd spent the rest of the day attempting to keep Tenaya restrained and sedated long enough to give the other female a good dose of the Venjix antidote she'd developed and after that...? Well, let's just say they had some catching up to do before telling Dillon that it had worked.

When they finally were all together, K was able to give them a solid congratulations on a job well done. Looking about, it was easier to see the damage the long mission had done to her team, whether they all tried to show it or not. Ziggy was his usual cheery self, but he was sporting a ton of bruises and a black eye that had come from him falling asleep in the shower and hitting his head on the faucet, improbable as that explanation may have been; Summer was rather calm but seemed to get noticeably worried about the rest of the team's well-being, and a tad worn out; Flynn had been enjoying his 'creature comforts' a bit too much, drinking a ton of smoothies soon as he was in and going for chinese food with Gemma as soon as possible, complaining when asked that the food in the Wastes had just left him off kilter; Dillon was agitated and excessively protective of Tenaya as she hovered awkwardly at the back of the group, trying not to draw too much attention to herself; Scott was grouchy, as K had noticed earlier; And the twins? Well, they were happy to bounce around and scribble in their journals (or awesome diaries) but there was that haunted look that showed up in their eyes now and then when the doc looked hard enough.

"Rangers, you set out eight days ago on a secret mission. Yesterday you returned, successful. You have all performed admirably, though questionably, and I thank you for that. I'm very proud of you all and think you all have more than earned this temporary respite. However, do not let yourselves be unguarded during this time. Venjix is neither gone, nor defeated, merely severely injured. We have not only taken many of his slaves but destroyed some of his most important bases and took one of his more valued generals. It will take him some time to regain the ground we lost him, but this only means we need to work harder to become better, as well as keep ourselves in good health." Dr. K attempted to keep her speech short and sweet, but knew she was getting a bit long-winded. It was a habit the young woman claimed to have picked up from Ziggy with his constant rambling, but Gem and Gemma confided in the team that she'd always been like that when she got too nervous and confused with stuff like this, and they were highly inclined to believe her.

"So you want us to hang around and just train till he comes back with another Attackbot?" Dillon growled from where he sat, causing Tenaya to flinch a little.

Dr. K raised a brow, "Of course not. That would be ridiculous. I do understand the need for you all to retain your mental as well as physical health, and at a time like this you can almost afford it."

"What will you be doing while we're off relaxing then?" Scott inquired, wondering vaguely just what kind of trouble the Doc was going to get herself into. Though, he had to admit to being a little curious and hopeful that it was on the memory retriever. The whole team were eager to see that complete and see Dillon return to being whole in mind. And with Tenaya here, there was even more reason to be interested in its completion.

The dark haired doctor sighed and shook her head, "Working, as you already know. You all have been insisting on my creating a new suit, and finding a way to get Ranger Black and his sister their memories back – and I intend to try and make progress on that. Now, you are dismissed. I have things to do."

A sigh of relief seemed to circulate the room and the team slowly sidled out. Ziggy and Tenaya hung around after the others before Dillon came back to nudge his sister out of the room. The younger male was about to say something to his best friend but thought better of it, noticing the black ranger's lack of notice for him. Usually Dillon'd have at least tried to nudge his friend out of Dr. K's way too, but today he seemed only concerned with his sister, something the young doctor noticed with interest. How odd.

Ziggy rolled his eyes and shrugged, heading back into the room to sit by Dr. K's table and grin at her. "Guy's acting like she's made of glass, amirite?" he joked, a sad little glimmer to his eyes.

The genius's eyes furrowed at that, "If I recall right, weren't you the one sent with him on this last mission, Ranger Green? Maybe he's just presently sick of your company, as I am increasingly becoming?"

The curly haired young man waved a hand, ignoring her cut at him, since K did that all the time out of habit, "Nah, Dillon barely noticed I was there the whole time. He was kinda preoccupied the whole time we were working. You know he's out of it when I'M picking up on HIS mistakes."

Dr. K's eyebrows hit her hairline at that, "I find that hard to believe, Series Green. He's not THAT thick headed."

A small snicker escaped her companion as he shook his head, "You never noticed did you? Well, I guess you wouldn't what with you being you." Ziggy commented, shaking his head and continuing at seeing the confusion that remained on the Doc's face, "Dillon's got a big brother complex bigger than Venjix's palace – he's been worried about saving 'Aya since he learned who she was. This was just his first chance to make a serious attempt at rescuing her without everyone jumping on him."

The girl rolled her eyes at that, remembering Tenaya grumbling something about that when she'd first been freed too – she loved her brother very much and was glad to be free of Venjix, but he did act a bit overprotective at times. It was then that K realized just who was telling her this. "How exactly do you know any of this, Ranger Green?"

Ziggy looked like he was about to make a cheerful and quick reply to that when he stopped, and now it was his turn to look confused, his brow furrowing and mouth working as if trying to find an answer that just wasn't there but should be. "I...have absolutely no idea." the young man admitted with a shrug, rolling his eyes again – this time a lot less seriously than he had at Dillon – and leaning over to look at what K was working on. "So, need any help?" A question which was only answered with an exasperated sigh.

* * *

Thanks to all who favved this! Reviews are loved, and suggestions are welcome. I have a pretty solid plan for this story but if anyone wants to offer some help, I am open. :3 Love you all!


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note:** Just a lil' fun fanfic I've been talking about with my friends and threw together for them. I apologize if my writing is terrible or my plots are ridiculous.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Power Rangers or any related media or characters. The story idea is my own but the rest isn't. Everything is copyrighted to its respective owners.

If you review, it'll make me smile and I'll try to respond to positive ones or questions here.

**WARNING!:** This fic will contain slash, femslash and possibly even some het (le gasp). Nothing m-rated, mind you, but it will contain pairings. Please keep this in mind. Pairings included are Dillon/Ziggy, Flynn/Gemma, Scott/Summer, Tenaya/Dr. K.

**WARNING 2!: **Contains some spoilers for certain plot points in the series, and is slightly AU. I won't be following the series exactly at some points so you have been warned.

Thanks so much to Dream for all the reviews 3 You're really making this awesomely fun to write.

* * *

Tenaya, it turned out, made an excellent lab assistant. With her and Ziggy helping out, Dr. K was actually getting a good deal accomplished in researching memory treatments that were used before the Venjix attacks, and with Gem and Gemma helping, she was making amazing progress on the new morpher and suit. Tenaya would occasionally joke her help was really only canceling out any hurt Ziggy was doing to the project, but it was all in good fun – Tenaya was making an effort to be part of the team and family atmosphere they had going, and her slightly-less-cruel teasing of Ziggy was just one of the ways she did that.

For his part, Ziggy actually was doing plenty to help and to make Tenaya feel welcome. With her around to nudge him towards tasks he could complete (or to help him with ones he couldn't) things were getting done much faster than had it just been Dr. K trying to keep Ziggy out of her stuff. Tenaya had her fair share of problems with the other rangers – and the occasional moment where she snapped and nearly tried to fight them out of habit – but she did understand why the Green Ranger wanted to help and be involved, even if he was supposed to be on break.

Tenaya'd explained it to K one afternoon, hiding out from her brother in the labs, her robotic eyes zooming across pages and pages of data on old memory projects that had been running at the time the world ended. The information was boring and she only stopped scanning if something that actually might be relevant came up, so Tenaya was more than free to chat with K, something the younger girl was warming up to more and more.

"He's lonely and I think he's fond of you." she commented, lightly brushing her long hair back, resting her hand a little from all the typing. One of those hands may be robotic, but the other wasn't completely.

"Why do you say that?" K responded, her eyes hidden behind a pair of magnifying goggles that she was wearing while working on some inside mechanics to the new morpher, attempting to make it somewhat better than the previous ones.

The brunette smirked, "He's got no family to speak of, he's more socially inept than he'll admit to, and he has a fondness for young orphans. Let's face it, Ziggy thinks of you as family and he wants to do whatever he can to help out his family." And it was true – Tenaya'd noticed that habit of her's when she'd started paying more attention how welcoming he was to her and how she'd seen him act with Summer.

At that, K turned around to pull her goggles up, "So, as he would say, he has a 'big brother complex' as big as Ranger Black's?"

Tenaya stopped her search for a moment to give her girlfriend a strange expression, "Are you kidding? Not even close to that huge." the girl visibly shuddered at the thought a bit, "I do NOT need two big brothers lording over me, thanks."

This statement drew and amused sound from Summer, who'd just entered the Ranger Room to bring them some lunch. "Talking about your sibling problems again, 'Aya?" she inquired, handing over a tall glass of iced tea and a sandwich to a very grateful ex-Attackbot, before heading over to put Dr. K's lunch somewhere safe.

"Actually, we were discussing why Ranger Green seems to always want to harass us while we work and whether or not it is derived from loneliness or having a big brother complex similar to that of his idol." K looked like she was about to return to working, ignoring the lunch she'd been brought but Tenaya was already pulling the young genius's goggles off and nudging her towards the meal.

The blonde cocked her head to the side before making a puzzled expression, "He's more of a middle child, actually." she commented before wandering out.

Pouting at having been told she was wrong by two people now, K sulkily began to nibble at one of her sandwiches – cut into sailboats just like she liked them. Dr. K would never admit it to the rest of the team, but after having had the little sandwich corners as part of the mini-buffet at Summer's wedding, she'd been attached to the cutesy way of slicing one's lunch, and tended to prefer her's cut like that. How Summer had picked up on that little quirk was anyone's guess, but she was pretty observant.

Tenaya smiled, sipping her tea before turning back to her work, "Cheer up, K. Sandwiches don't taste better the longer you pout at the-" the girl stopped, mid-laugh, staring at the computer screen. "Actually hold that thought – K, come here!"

The raven haired doctor dashed to the other girl's side, looking at the computer screen with rapt attention. "What did you find?" she asked frantically, as any information that was helpful could be considered a breakthrough at this point.

Her companion peered at the screen, raising a brow. "It's reports of a government agency called the ACRP – Advanced Criminal Rehabilitation Project. I saw something on this earlier so I skipped it since it sounded irrelevant but look at this." the brunette pointed at a particular section of the text, quite surprised by what she was reading.

"The Advanced Criminal Rehabilitation Project? The hell is that?" Scott asked, his eyes wide as K and Tenaya addressed the group, discussing their findings.

The latter saved her girlfriend from having to explain it, "The ACRP was a government project that specialized in taking dangerous or insane criminals off the streets and altering their minds with memory treatments of some kind. Their goals were to remove, alter or block the parts of the brain that made those criminals do what they did. The project was enough of a success that they were even allowed to branch out and test their technology on non-criminals – people who were having trouble with stress after a traumatic event, for example."

Dillon looked annoyed at this, "So they grabbed random people and just forced them to forget rather than helping them in any way?" he growled, not exactly a fan of such a treatment for obvious reasons.

"That was the intent, yes." K agreed, moving past the topic to the more important business. "However, this proves they had advanced technology that could properly alter a mind this way even back before Venjix took over. The listing we found said their headquarters was in the city of Attica. Attica was well known for their underground bunkers before Venjix attacked. People would have remained in those, had the radiation from the attacks not necessitated a move to safer ground." At the confused faces of her team and K rolled her eyes, looking to Tenaya for help once more.

"They had underground bunkers that weren't safe for living in during the war, but would keep records. Of things like important memory experiments. We think Venjix wouldn't have raided those and we might actually be able to get someone there and back safely to scout while he's in the process of recovering."

Scott looked contemplative for a moment before nodding, "So, let me get this straight - you want us to go out into the wastes again, to check out a particular city and see if it has any information that might help restore Dillon's memories?"

Flynn leaned over to Summer at that point, commenting quietly, "This is star'in to soun' pretty famil'ar."

Dr. K looked annoyed, "No, Ranger Operator Series Red, I do NOT want you to go into the wastes to do this. Had you let me finish, I would have been able to say we're only sending part of the team. Should Venjix manage to somehow regain enough power to send an Attackbot in your absence, I don't want the city defenseless."

Flynn threw his hands up into the air, "Ack! Even betta', splittin' up the team!"

Tenaya gave the Scotsman a dirty look, "Do you want her to try and make this machine or not? As I was told, it was you lot who pressured K into attempting to make it at all." That managed to shut up any further protests from the group.

"So who are you sending?" Summer asked gently, trying to coax the conversation back into a more calm direction.

"Thank you Tenaya, Ranger Yellow," K said, nodding to each of them before continuing. "The away team is to consist of Ranger Black, Green and Blue, along with Tenaya-" here, a new protest came up.

"Ooooooooh no. Not on your life." Dillon said, standing up and looking ticked, "I don't care if Ziggy and I have to go on this crazy mission but we are NOT taking Tenaya."

"She is a skilled fighter and my assistant in this business. She has as much right to be along as you do." K retorted, looking up at the ranger with irritation.

The black ranger's fist hit the nearby table and he looked quite ready to hit Dr. K for her talk, "She's my sister and she's not even a ranger!"

Before either K or Tenaya could add another protest to this, Ziggy and Summer jumped up, taking each carefully by the arms to hold them back. They both knew this would end badly if either woman tried to argue with Dillon while he was like this. The Black Ranger needed to be broken out of his over-protective brother state, but this was not that way to do it.

"Hey, hey, let's not all fight. You can stay and help Dr. K with stuff here, 'Aya, and you guys can get some work done without me around." Ziggy told the irritated Tenaya, trying to make a joke, as he pushed her a bit away from her brother. He was silently mouthing 'don't push this' when he was facing away from his best friend, trying to be as subtle about it as was physically possible for him. The Green ranger wasn't bright but he'd cared about Dillon long enough to have a pretty damn good idea when it was best to drop a subject and make a quick exit, at least most of the time.

Summer smiled carefully and separated Dr. K from Dillon with her raised hands, "Let's relax. I'll go along in Tenaya's place. It's better for everyone if you guys are both here in case there's a problem. I'll keep Flynn and Dillon from killing Ziggy, and we'll try to get back as quickly and efficiently as possible."

The Yellow Ranger's volunteering managed to calm down Dillon, but it riled up Scott a bit. Luckily, he was a good deal less protective and was easily shut up with a look from his girlfriend. Sure, he'd complain when she had to go, but Scott knew Summer was an adult and a damn good power ranger too, she'd be able to take care of herself. Plus, Flynn really would need someone to keep him from murdering Ziggy – the youngest ranger tended to get unbelievably annoying when someone'd been trapped in a van with them for hours.

With that situation averted, Ziggy and Summer headed back to the labs with the lab team to try and get them somewhat cooled off. The Series Yellow was an acceptable replacement for Tenaya on this mission but that didn't mean either of the younger women was particularly pleased with the arrangement or having to be held back from what they considered an argument they were right in.

"You guys need to calm down, you can't just start yelling at Dillon and expect his mind to change. You should know that by now, Dr. K." Summer told them once they were in the lab. She'd sent Ziggy to sit by the door and watch one of the Doc's many security monitors to make sure they weren't interrupted. After all, Dillon'd probably be pissed if he came in and heard how Summer was explaining this to his sister and the Doc.

"He needs to get off of my case is what he needs to do." Tenaya growled, slumping in her work chair.

Summer sighed quietly and shook her head, "I understand that, we're going to try to talk him down and get him to realize his mistakes. But for now, fighting with him will only make him annoyed rather than proof your point."

"His insubordination is tiresome." Dr. K snapped, pacing around before settling on Tenaya's knee. They were safe to do things like that with Ziggy keeping watch and accepting Summer there. The blonde had had an inkling as to the relationship between the ex-enemy general and their boss, but had previously not seen any concrete evidence. As such, Summer just blinked a bit on seeing them like that before smiling and continuing her calming explanation.

Tone even, the Yellow Ranger pointed out another matter they'd missed, "You know, if Tenaya WERE to go along, Dillon's over-protectiveness would only increase. He's bad enough within the shield where we're mostly safe, but outside where things are actually dangerous? You'd want to punch his face in after the fifth time he told you what you couldn't do."

The other girl nodded her acquiescence, trying not to be too sour on the subject. "I appreciate him rescuing me, but I feel like a prisoner with him wanting to keep an eye on me so much."

Summer nodded sadly, "It's because he's worried about losing you a third time." After all, last time he'd regained Tenaya, she'd gotten recaptured and ended up losing almost all of her humanity to Venjix's control for a time.

"And hey, look on the bright side – if he's outta Corinth with us, you two can go on dates without any hassle!" Ziggy called, grinning over his shoulder at the group, his mop of messy brown hair falling in his eyes as he leaned backwards over the chair he was monitoring from.

"I regret having to send Ranger Green on this mission." K commented, glaring at the young ranger till he'd sat up properly to watch the monitor again. It was her small way of admitting they had a point but she didn't want to say he was right.

Summer nodded, "Why was he picked?" she inquired, mostly curious. It wasn't that Series Yellow had no faith in her friend, but Ziggy wasn't the best person to send on things like this, and they all knew it.

"He and Series Black are an amazing team, whether or not in makes much sense, and having at least one complete team capable of summoning a megazord along is a good idea."

Tenaya smirked, "That and she wanted Scott here to keep Gem and Gemma under control, otherwise the team would have been you, Scott, Flynn and Dillon."

Ziggy rolled his eyes, leaning back once more, "Pff, good team or not, I doubt Dillon'll even notice I'm there. He hasn't said one word to me since we came back you know."

The blonde turned around once more to shake her head at him, "He has too. Yesterday he told you to move and last week he asked you to pass him a screwdriver he dropped."

Series Green leaned back to raise an eyebrow at her, "No that was Scott he asked to pass the screwdriver. I just happened to be the one who got it for him because Scott didn't want to move."

"Move's still a word." Tenaya called cheerily, one of her arms wrapped lightly around K, and that was the end to that discussion. Summer had plans with Scott to get back to, and now that he wasn't on guard duty, Ziggy was immediately sent out grocery shopping. After all, Tenaya and K wanted time alone, but they weren't cruel enough to dump an excitable and bored Ranger Green on the team in this weather. That would just be inhumane.

Idly, K watched the brunette boy skip off to go get them the requested groceries and she raised a brow. "Is it just me, or is he way more disappointed than he should be that Series Black isn't talking to him?"

Tenaya grinned down at her girlfriend, "Is it just me or is he the topic of discussion way more than he should be lately?" she pointed out, and there was really no arguing with her when she had a look like that on her face.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note:** Just a lil' fun fanfic I've been talking about with my friends and threw together for them. I apologize if my writing is terrible or my plots are ridiculous.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Power Rangers or any related media or characters. The story idea is my own but the rest isn't. Everything is copyrighted to its respective owners.

If you review, it'll make me smile and I'll try to respond to positive ones or questions here.

**WARNING!:** This fic will contain slash, femslash and possibly even some het (le gasp). Nothing m-rated, mind you, but it will contain pairings. Please keep this in mind. Pairings included are Dillon/Ziggy, Flynn/Gemma, Scott/Summer, Tenaya/Dr. K.

**WARNING 2!: **Contains some spoilers for certain plot points in the series, and is slightly AU. I won't be following the series exactly at some points so you have been warned.

Thanks again to all of my awesome readers. Another thanks to Dream for the continuing reviews and a thanks to PinkRanger who totally reviewed RIGHT BEFORE I posted chapter 3 XD Love you all and keep on responding 3

* * *

The drive to Attica was way more depressing than either Flynn or Summer had expected. Dillon was refusing to speak to or even acknowledge Ziggy, and the Green Ranger was stuck in the back after the last time he'd tried to navigate for Flynn. He mostly curled in the corner, watching for any signs of danger as they drove along.

"This is weird." Summer commented idly to Flynn, looking over her shoulder frequently to check on the pair.

The blue ranger glanced into the rear-view miror quickly before nodding to her comment. "Neve' been in a ca' with Z' this long wi'ou' him talkin the whole tahm." he commented, expression somewhat dark as he glanced once more before returning his eyes to the road.

Summer nodded but returned to watching the map, a lot of the towns and roads along the way to the city having been blown up during the attacks that had turned the world outside the shield into the Wastes. That made things extremely hard to navigate, especially in the re-purposed old bus they'd had to use after destroying the Colonel's van on their trip to Omega City. Flynn had had to spend a good long while repairing the vehicle before they'd been able to leave.

The blonde did attempt to start up conversation with the other two members of the group, try to get them to even acknowledge each other or that they were in a bus. However, she had absolutely no luck with Dillon and Ziggy kept looking startled whenever she addressed him, as if he'd been in deep thought. When asked about what he was thinking about, he'd appear puzzled before saying he didn't know and look out the window again. So there went her attempts at getting them to talk.

After about a day-and-a-half's worth of driving, Summer was positive they were lost. The map didn't make any sense, they hadn't past any good landmarks, and she was SURE she'd seen that rock before. At least three times. And thrown an empty cup at it, which was still there. The woman was about to yell at Flynn to stop when suddenly Ziggy's brown mop of curls appeared at her shoulder and he pointed to the left.

"Go that way." his voice startled the duo, causing Flynn to nearly crash into the rock as he swerved the bus around, and Summer to hold her heart.

"Ziggy, don't startle us like that, particularly not when Flynn's driving." the yellow ranger scolded her companion quietly before shaking her head a bit, "How did you know we were supposed to go left?"

He blinked at her a few times, "Because Flynn's been turning right every time we passed that rock?" he asked, before shaking his head and pointing to a slightly newer rock up ahead, "Get closer to that one and go straight for a while. You'll see a sort of little mountain-y thing after a bit. Go left there."

Flynn peered back at Ziggy for a moment or two before shrugging, heading the way he said. The man usually didn't trust his friend's directions but that look Ziggy had, the confused by slightly sure, it was enough to let him know he should probably follow whatever instructions were being given. That and Summer's directions hadn't been too good up till this point.

"Ziggy, do you want to switch with me?" Summer inquired when they reached the aforementioned "mountain-y thing". She needed a rest and hanging over the back of her chair was probably not the best position for the younger ranger to be in at this point.

The change-over was quick and left her Summer able to head to the back of the bus and see if she could get any reaction out of Dillon what-so-ever. She was hopeful to get more out of him than when she'd been up front trying to make conversation, but Summer didn't want to be unrealistic.

"Hey, you doing okay?" she started softly, heading back to sit on the seat across from her friend. Dillon at least bothered to glance at her this time and nod some, eyes returning to the back windows of the bus once more.

Summer smiled a bit, "You know she's probably fine, right?" the blonde pointed out, trying to hit on what was bugging him. "Scott and the others will keep Tenaya safe, and she's doing much better fitting in with the group and the city than anyone expected. She's even managed to stop trying to choke Ziggy when he surprises or annoys her."

Dillon nodded once more, letting out a long breath that blew his bangs a little bit, "I almost wish we weren't bringing him." he admitted, "I didn't want 'Aya coming along, but I'd have dealt with that over having Ziggy with us."

The answer startled his teammate, but she smiled, glancing to the front of the bus, to where Ziggy was pointing and quietly directing Flynn, no doubt creeping the Scot out with his less than enthusiastic behavior. "It's a good thing we did bring him though, he seems to know his way around pretty well."

"That's part of what's worrying me." the black ranger leaned back a bit in the tiny back seat, bending one of his legs, and resting a hand on his knee. "Have you noticed something's been off about him a lot lately?"

Summer quirked at this, looking at him funny, "I'm surprised you noticed. You've been avoiding him like the plague lately. Scott was starting to think you two had a fight and that's why Ziggy was so out of it and you were acting like he didn't exist."

Dillon snorted, "No. We didn't have a fight – it'd be easier if we had." he told her. Summer gave him a quiet look that urged the man on in his explanation. "I care about Zig, I do, but he's done what I needed him to – I was just trying to fill a need to protect someone till I found my sister, and I've got her back now, I don't need to try and protect him the same way anymore."

There was hesitation in Dillon's words, as if he weren't even sure of them himself. Sure of their meaning or their emotion. "So you're avoiding him and sheltering Tenaya since you think you only cared about him because you needed a younger sibling to protect?" Summer restated for him, making the awkward and stupid part of the whole idea a bit more obvious.

"Yes." Dillon snapped back, turning back to the window, "I need to let him live his life." Well that conversation was over, but Summer somehow felt didn't really want to continue it.

With a roll of her eyes, the woman went to take a middle seat on the bus and relax. Guys could be idiots about their emotions some days and it really tried her patience. It'd taken Scott more than a year of being close with her to realize they might just have something more than friendship, and she had a feeling it'd take Dillon a long time to figure out and admit to himself that maybe he really did care about his best friend more than he thought.

Watching the two in the front seat to take her mind off of Dillon, Summer found her mind retreating to what he'd said before explaining his problem. He'd said something that'd been weighing on most of the rangers' minds off and on recently.

"_Have you noticed something's been off about him a lot lately?" _

Oh yes, she'd noticed. They'd all noticed something seemed to be wrong with Ziggy. Hell, even outsiders were noticing and asking on occasion. The problems had started small and just seemed like weird quirks – his inability to improve in fighting, for one thing and his random lapses in intelligent thought for another. However, with time and observation, it was beginning to be noticeable that he seemed to have something actually off about him. This recent behavior where he seemed to understand and know things he couldn't explain was just another little moment in the confusion. The fact that even Dillon noticed when he was pointedly trying to NOT pay attention added to the worry forming in Summer's gut.

Flynn, for his part, was trying to keep his eyes on the road and not stop and smack Ziggy for being a tad creepy. The other wasn't rambling or trying to have a snack, and he was giving directions that he obviously didn't understand, and it was getting on the blue ranger's nerves. Not because he had a problem with it but Odin's beard could things start making sense already? He was more than thankful when they pulled up in front of the obviously deserted remains of the city. Boy was he glad to see THAT.

"Well now, Mr. Smarty, any idea how to ge' us in'o the bunkers?" Flynn asked, parking and giving Ziggy a decidedly unamused look.

The younger man looked sheepishly at him, seemingly apologetic for the weirdness. If people were annoyed at how odd Ziggy's brain was being lately, it was nothing compared to how annoyed Ziggy himself was at it. He didn't exactly LIKE being useless and ticking people off with weird directions that came from no where and familiarity with landmarks he barely knew. He just chalked it up to having lived in the city with his last family before joining the cartels, but that didn't explain the huge gaps he had when it came to this place. But now wasn't the time to expound on why his brain didn't seem to want to work, Flynn had asked him a question and he needed to answer it.

Wracking the void his mind seemed to be very often, Ziggy finally pulled something up. "Yeah, there's a basement in one of the buildings that'll take you down into the bunkers. They're all connected, or should be now." he said, "I'm not sure which building. It might've been a hospital or somethin'." another apologetic look and shrug, and he was sure Flynn would deck him.

Summer smiled gently, putting a hand on Ziggy's shoulder and steering him a bit away. "Come on, let's see if we can find that hospital then. Flynn, you and Dillon can figure out who stays with the bus on your own. We'll meet you back here soon."

The young ranger relaxed under the woman's light touch to his shoulder. If there was anyone Ziggy was grateful to above all others, it was Summer, with Dillon coming in a close second. She willingly filled a role of big sister or mother that he was lacking and seemed happy to do so for not only the green ranger but for other members of the team. Scott would sometimes joke he'd be doomed when he and Summer finally had kids, but everyone knew he appreciated her maternal side quite a lot.

"Doing okay?" she asked, walking him through the wrecked buildings and pointing at some to see if they seemed like what he wanted.

He nodded a bit, making an effort to spot the appropriate building among the wreckage. "Yeah, sort of. This is all really weird and I don't like it." he admitted, "I'm starting to have more and more of an idea about how Dillon feels when he's wandering around aimlessly trying to figure out his memories."

Another hand lightly clapped Ziggy's other shoulder and Dillon's voice could be heard, "At least I'm not the only one." the older man commented before walking ahead of them, "So we're looking for what again? A hospital or something?"

The Green Ranger seemed flabbergasted that his friend had even spoken to him, having to shake himself a bit before responding, "Y-yeah. A hospital or an...an orphanage!" he pointed up ahead, seeing the building that vaguely flitted into his head, slightly more clear than the other thoughts. Oh he could remember having been there, at least once. Not that that was a surprise, he had been an orphan after all, though that information was in the fuzzier sections of his brain.

Summer had been exchanging a warm look and a smile with Dillon, proud of him for at least trying to be friendly with Ziggy before the youngest member of the group had his revelation. When he pointed, all three took off running towards it, and thankfully were able to get inside without much incident.

The basement door was locked but the door itself had taken a bit of a beating along with the building, so Dillon was easily able to just rip it off the hinges and help them down the stairs, which were concrete and actually pretty intact.

Down there was what looked like a ton of very sturdy file cabinets and what looked like an intricate series of reinforced caves. This may not be the place they were looking for, but they could start looking around down here.

"Ziggy, why don't you scout ahead and see if you can find anywhere that looks like the record logs of a government agency, okay?" Summer suggested, nudging her friend forward so she could talk to Dillon a bit while he was gone. He agreed quickly and the blonde smiled, turning to watch the black ranger idly pulling some of the files out of the cabinets.

Wandering over, the yellow ranger leaned lightly on the one he was looking through and smiled. "It's good that you're trying to be nice to him again." she commented as he seemed to scan over the files.

Dillon shrugged, "Yeah well, I have been being an ass and he doesn't deserve that. Particularly when we're all on a mission that's supposed to be helping me..." the man trailed off, seeming to find something interesting in the top drawer cabinet and reaching in to pull it out.

Summer's eyes widened before she had to duck out of the way, watching Dillon blow dust off of the file he'd found. "What is it?"

Her companion just stared at the file in his hand for a bit before showing it to her.

"Well...that explains how he knew the way here." the yellow ranger commented, opening the cover to the manilla folder marked Z. Alexander, and staring at the faded photograph of a very young Ziggy that was clipped to the file.

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Summer keeps taking over the direction of this fanfic from her. And yet somehow I don't blame her.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note:** Just a lil' fun fanfic I've been talking about with my friends and threw together for them. I apologize if my writing is terrible or my plots are ridiculous.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Power Rangers or any related media or characters. The story idea is my own but the rest isn't. Everything is copyrighted to its respective owners.

If you review, it'll make me smile and I'll try to respond to positive ones or questions here.

**WARNING!:** This fic will contain slash, femslash and possibly even some het (le gasp). Nothing m-rated, mind you, but it will contain pairings. Please keep this in mind. Pairings included are Dillon/Ziggy, Flynn/Gemma, Scott/Summer, Tenaya/Dr. K.

**WARNING 2!: **Contains some spoilers for certain plot points in the series, and is slightly AU. I won't be following the series exactly at some points so you have been warned.

* * *

Summer and Dillon stared in surprise as they read over the rather thick file for their friend. According to this, Ziggy'd been through a TON of families and none of them kept him for long. The last family to have had him was the Grover family who had apparently come from out of town for him and took him away with them. The pair would have read over the many details and special case notes in the file had a shout from up ahead not indicated he'd found something.

Quickly, Summer stashed the file in the pack she'd brought for the trip and the two dashed off down a tunnel after the sound of Ziggy's shouting. What they found was a long ways away, a rather large and somewhat barricaded door to one of the cave entrances, bearing the name A.C.R.P. In thick white paint. There seemed to be no way in, save for a huge broken section at the bottom of the door that Ziggy was poking his head out of.

"Hi." he smiled warmly, waving with the hand that barely fit out of the crack with him. "Nice to see you both."

Dillon raised a brow at the younger ranger, "Did you get yourself stuck?" he inquired, not willing to put something that dumb past the other. When the older ranger wasn't trying to distance himself from Ziggy, he had to admit, the other was kind of cute. That didn't mean he wasn't rather dense at times.

The curled haired male snorted, "Surprisingly, I'm not that dumb." he commented, retracting his hand and carefully rolling over to pull his head out of the hole. "I just had to shout for you guys from there. The room in here's pretty soundproofed and I can't get the door open." Indeed, Ziggy's voice was heavily muffled back there behind the thick metal.

Dillon shook his head and reached down, putting his hands under the hole and trying to use it to shove the door up. Sadly, it was pretty heavily in place and not at all budging. Summer had taken this time to look around for a keypad. When she didn't find one, her thoughts were confirmed.

"Ziggy? Can you try to look for a switch or a keypad by the door? Some way that'd open it?"

A snicker was heard for a second before Ziggy returned to speaking, "Oh I found one of those. It's been ripped out of the wall though. Nothing but wires left."

This got a grumbled sigh from the black ranger who promptly started to instruct his companion on which wires to touch and push together to make the door open. It took a few tries and Ziggy got himself shocked at least once but eventually, and much to their surprise, he got it working.

"They must have some sort of reserve power down here." Summer commented as she entered the rather advanced looking room. She was disappointed to note, however, that it'd obviously been ransacked, at least three drawers missing from one of the file cabinets, and there were all sorts of box shaped holes in the dust settled in the room. "This place has already been cleaned out."

Dillon was fiddling with the file cabinets again – was he just that nosy today or did he think he'd find something significant by playing around with file drawers yet again? Ziggy, meanwhile had climbed up on top of one of them and was fiddling with something at the ceiling, mumbling things under his breath.

"Summer, do you see a black cord twitching around down there somewhere?" the latter called, still fiddling with whatever he had found up there.

The blonde in question blinked before looking around and immediately noticing a wiggling black cold dangling from where Ziggy was and leading to a corner of the room buried in boxes. "I do!" she called back, dashing over to move the boxes and was quite surprised to find a hole in the floor that led right to a door she'd missed in the dust.

"It goes into this room!" she called back, trying the door, "Any idea what might be in there, Zig?"

The younger ranger grinned as he leaned back to reveal the security camera he'd been futzing with. "Yeah, for some reason I remembered there was a security camera in here somewhere that monitored who took stuff."

"Well someone sure did." Dillon commented, looking at the records and files in the cabinet, "This is more than a decade's worth of just memory treatments and the results of them and that's not even the most recent stuff. The drawers with that info are long gone."

Summer would have let out a frustrated sigh if she weren't busy with the damn door. "You can come help me try to get this open then, if the camera's still recording, it might show who took the files."

A bit of struggle on the part of all three rangers and they managed to get the door open, revealing a rather high tech security room. The setup was meant to record footage onto discs and then a robotic arm was automated to switch discs between reels. There had to be a TON of footage, all marked and saved on the different discs in the room.

"Thiiiiiiis is going to take forever to go through." Ziggy started to whine, looking at all the categorized disc files in the room, as well as the piles in front of them. He'd have continued but Summer put a hand up to stop him.

"Wait, do you notice anything odd about the discs?" she asked, eying the pile of loose security discs with great interest.

Dillon followed the trail her eyes were going and realized, "It's supposed to just drop the discs in the tray there and whoever's on duty would put them away. If everyone evacuated, no one's been here to put the discs away."

Summer smiled, knocking the top discs off the pile and pulling out the one all the way on the bottom, "which means the disc containing the last time someone was here working would be this one. And if I'm right, it'll show us who grabbed the files during the evacuation." she said with a grin, popping the disc into a nearby player.

A bit of fast forwarding later, and they reached the day of the evacuation to Corinth. The camera seemed to shake as several young security officers dashed around the room, on orders from a grizzly old doctor who was grabbing tons of boxes left and right. The officers hefted the stolen drawers up the stairs after him, the old doctor rushing to where the camera was. He stood up high on a stool, weathered face pressed close as he whispered a final, crackly message.

"_I-I'm Dr. Wesley McKay, I've worked here at the Project for many years. Everyone's evacuating to Corinth because of the attacks but I-I must leave you one message! If anyone out there has found a way in here, has found out about our projects, I must tell you the truth! Go to Corinth and ask for me, my sons will be there even if I'm not! They have the information that'll tell everything!"_

The camera continued to shake and rubble was obviously fallen around the good doctor as he spoke, _"O-one last thing I must tell you b-before I go! DO NOT TRUST THE SOUP! What they've done, what _**_I've_**_ done, what they've made us all do, it's all so very bad..." _He was visibly pulled away from the screen by a younger man and the rubble shook around the room, knocking the camera back onto its side where it could only partly see as the doctor and one of the security officers rushed out of the room holding the boxes. And as the door closed behind them, that large crack in the bottom was visible, indicating it'd been there for some time.

The trio of rangers were visibly stunned, looking between themselves as Summer popped out the disc. "well...that settles this then."

Dillon nodded, grabbing her a case to put the disc in, intending to throw the one that went inside it out. "We're going back to Corinth."

"Hey why's that case empty?" Ziggy asked, poking his head over Dillon's shoulder to look at the one his friend had just opened.

Another exchanged look and a lot of confusion past between the group before they headed back out the way they came. Something said it was time to get out of this city and head back home as soon as possible.

Flynn was keeping watch on the area as Summer, Dillon and Ziggy returned from their search. "Any sign of Venjix?" the blonde asked as she entered the bus, going to sit behind where Flynn had to so she could fill him in.

"Nah, seen no' hide no' hair o' any grinders or bo'ts. We mussve really hi' hard if he's not sendin nothin after us." the Scot told her, hopping into the driver's seat and starting up the bus.

Dillon snorted, "That or he's more interested in Corinth than what four rangers in an ugly bus are doing out here." he pointed out, heading for the back seat again.

Summer nodded, "It wasn't intended as a trap this time so maybe we just weren't important enough to waste what resources he has left on?" the woman trailed off as she noticed Ziggy staring slowly at a building in the distance, rather than getting into the truck. It was a house that'd probably seen better days, a ways away from the city in a slightly wooded area.

"Somethin' familiar lad?" Flynn asked, reaching out to tap the other ranger's shoulder, since Ziggy was half in the door and he was closest.

Ziggy blinked a bit before shaking his head, "Nope. Not really. I guess I'm just tired." he flashed one of those trademark smiles and skipped up to go to sleep in one of the seats, trusting Flynn's memory to get them back home all right.

On their way back, Summer and Dillon filled Flynn in on what they'd found in the bunkers, and all three resolved not to tell Ziggy till they'd had a chance to show Dr. K the file and search for this Dr. McKay. They didn't want to spring this information on the younger ranger in the middle of all of this without having a chance to properly examine it and explain the whole thing to him.

It seemed their trip outside of the shield was uneventful for more than one reason. Venjix had been having an awful time getting grinder production back on schedule as well as trying to get Kilobyte, Shifter and Crunch repaired enough to get Attackbots and world domination plans back on schedule. The loss of Tenaya 15 as well as his main three generals had been almost as big a blow as the destruction of his bases, but the virus was always prepared, or so he said. After all, he was perfection! No one got the better of Venjix, not even the Power Rangers! And yet he was still having such trouble getting things re-situated. Were he any other than himself, he might be complaining of headaches at this point, but machines did not GET headaches! Even if General Crunch practically gave him some every day.

The trip back to Corinth was boring and much less eventful than the trip to Attica (not that one could call the trip there eventful, Flynn had commented at some point on their way back) and they arrived home in a short time, able to get past the shield relatively fast as the generators were being repaired during this downtime from Venjix attacks. Colonel Truman wanted the shield active and at better than full strength by the time the next wave of the war came to them and so far so good.

Dr. K had been in an exceptionally good mood – well, for her anyway – when the team returned to give her their findings. She was sitting pleasantly at her computer and analyzing this and that with a minute smile on her features as Summer, Ziggy and Dillon came in to see her. Flynn had escaped to 'rescue Scott from the twins' supposedly, which meant he was annoyed at having to be away from Gemma for two away missions in a row and fully intended to make up for it if he could get her away from her brother.

Ziggy still seemed lethargic after his nap in the bus, so he mostly wandered over to K and gave the little woman a hug (whispering something that made her adjust her collar) before yawning again. "You two mind if I leave you to telling her what we found?" he asked, and stumbled off slowly when he received nods.

With him out of the way, Summer was able to not only pull out the security camera disc but the file they'd found in the orphanage. Dr. K seemed fascinated and confused by what they'd told her of Ranger Green's behavior throughout the whole trip and by the evidence that showed he'd lived in Attica for a time but couldn't remember it.

"So what you're saying is Ranger Green might be experiencing some memory loss as well?" she asked quietly, looking over the disc she'd been given quietly.

Summer nodded, taking a seat by Dr. K, "Not just him either. Dr. McKay also went on to talk about a place he referred to as The Soup and how they'd made them do bad things." she added, taking the time to peer and see just what Ziggy'd been commenting on. Spotting the edge of the little mark on the young doctor's neck, she smiled, refraining from comment. So K and Tenaya HAD taken advantage of Dillon being gone to get to go on a date.

K's eyebrow's knit and the young doctor seemed almost irked. "Don't tell Gem or Gemma you found out about this. Go see if you can find out where to find this Dr. McKay person or his sons." she remarked quietly, shooing the pair from her office, "I need to get back to work."

Summer lingered for a moment, smiling lightly at Dr. K once again, "I notice the space for the new suit is empty. I supposed the operator is testing it out?" the woman commented, "Though your old monitor room isn't the best place to test Ranger powers." The last statement was loud enough to be heard through the crack in the little door off to the side of the lab. Summer winked at the person peeking out of it and headed from the room.

The young doctor rolled her eyes, turning to glance at the hidden ranger, "You can come out now, they're gone. But you're in trouble. Both Series Yellow and Series Green saw that little present you left on my neck, and they saw the reflection off of your helmet."


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Note:** Just a lil' fun fanfic I've been talking about with my friends and threw together for them. I apologize if my writing is terrible or my plots are ridiculous.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Power Rangers or any related media or characters. The story idea is my own but the rest isn't. Everything is copyrighted to its respective owners.

If you review, it'll make me smile and I'll try to respond to positive ones or questions here.

**WARNING!:** This fic will contain slash, femslash and possibly even some het (le gasp). Nothing m-rated, mind you, but it will contain pairings. Please keep this in mind. Pairings included are Dillon/Ziggy, Flynn/Gemma, Scott/Summer, Tenaya/Dr. K.

**WARNING 2!: **Contains some spoilers for certain plot points in the series, and is slightly AU. I won't be following the series exactly at some points so you have been warned.

* * *

Dr. McKay, it seemed, was a very hard guy to track down. Dillon and Summer had had to get permission from Colonel Truman to check through records on citizens in the city. Then they had to locate the address and by that time, it was too late to visit the man, who happened to be rather old and not in the best of health. The pair had visited the next day but were informed by one of his sons that he wouldn't be free to have visitors for another three days. By that point, Dillon was sick of the whole business, so Summer agreed to take Tenaya with her instead or go alone if the other was busy, which the younger female was increasingly in recent days.

The younger female was having a very hard time keeping both her activities with Dr. K and her new position as Ranger Operator secret from her brother. Dillon wasn't as insufferable after his time away in Attica, but he was still an overprotective pain, and Summer admitted not getting a chance to talk about with him, due to other concerns. Tenaya understood this, but that didn't make his behavior any less annoying, and she knew it'd only get worse if he heard about either her relationship or her joining the team. Dr. K hadn't even told the other members of the team she was done the morpher, let alone that they had a new operator yet.

"So, think this guy will talk?" the younger woman inquired as she and Summer were let into the old Dr.'s house and led back towards his sickroom. They were nervous about the whole meeting, not entirely sure if dredging up the past from someone so sick was a good idea. And yet, the way he'd looked at the end of the video had said he needed to get whatever this was off his chest.

Dr. McKay didn't look too much older than he had at the end of the video, but he was much more ill looking. His skin seemed too big for him and his eyes were deep-set and haunted. He didn't even have to ask who the two women were when they arrived – he recognized Summer as a Power Ranger immediately and if Tenaya was with her, the girl was probably an associate of some sort.

The old eyes widened and he raised a wizened hand towards the pair, "Y-youuuuu, you're here about the taaaaape aren't you? About...the Prooooject." his voice was wheezy and raspy, obviously the years had been awfully unkind to the poor old doctor.

Summer nodded quietly, taking a seat by the old man and gripping his wrinkled hand in an attempt to sooth him. Tenaya hung back, waiting to see what kind of information her friend could get by coaxing the old man. "Yes, Dr. McKay, we saw your message at the end of the security footage. What is it you wanted to tell so much?"

His eyes were soft and full of emotion as the old man spoke, "The...Project, it used to be a good place. When I joined...it was a bright and hopeful place, intending to do good...hoping to protect people from dangerous criminals and give some...some of them a new lease on life."

It took him a few moments to regain his breath, stopping to shake his head, eyes closing at bad memories, "We were getting good at it...we had medicines to deal with...sideeffects...but then...then THEY showed up!" his eyes opened again, looking horrified, "Alphabet Soup...they wanted us to share our tech...help them brainwash their subjects. Said it would help with them protecting us...We wouldn't share...so they sent us subjects now and then with instructions..."

Summer continued to pet the old man's hand but by now he was shaking violently as he spoke, "I-I kn-kn-knew things were going bad for real when they brought...them. Two kids...the oldest was barely over thirteen...they were kept apart cause one was a Soup subject...made me alter them...keep the one under control...keep the other...OUT."

Tenaya's eyebrow's shot up at this, darting forward to ask a question now, "Who were they? What did the Soup want done with them?" she demanded, voice going an octave higher, asking despite Summer's motions for her to be quiet.

The man looked ready to cry, shaking his head, "Little girl, th-they wanted her obedient, to forget she had ever been outside...wanted her to forget meeting this boy...said she'd had treatments before...poor baby...had blood spattered all over her, looked so scared..."

"What happened next?" Tenaya demanded, eyes wild. She had a feeling she already knew who the little girl was, particularly because of something she'd been told before coming out today.

His mouth worked a moment before he continued, "They t-t-took her back, brought in the boy next...he was wild...so desperate...kept screaming her name...bleeding badly from a gunshot to his shoulder...couldn't knock him out for the procedure...he screamed the whole time...called them murderers...begged to be let go...they wanted so much removed! More than half his memory! I said I couldn't do it...not without leaving him severely damaged...they didn't care about him at all...said it was fine so long as he was alive, even if he was a vegetable...were so cold about it..."

The man clutched at Summer's hand, looking so very wild eyed then, "I-I didn't w-w-want to hurt people like this! I-I even tried to help him get back in to get at the files! Th-they found out! S-s-s-sent someone after us! We broke a hole in-into one of the little doors in the records room so he could get i-in and out with his m-m-memory disk and r-r-records, but they found out! He-he barely escaped! Got sent away with a new family who were paid to take him," he was rambling by this point and the words were becoming desperately slurred, causing one of the man's sons to come in and try to usher them away.

"Give them what we took!" the man shouted to his son before collapsing on the bed, eyes in tears, "Tell them...I'm sorry." and with that he fell back asleep, his two younger sons coming in to give the man his medicine and fluff pillows.

The elder son sighed, "I apologize for my father. He's seen quite a lot in his time. I'll get you those folders and whatnot. Do you need me to carry them to the car for you?" And with that he was gone, leaving Summer and Tenaya outside alone.

The blonde immediately turned to her younger teammate and stared, "Why did you go off on him like that?"

Sighing Tenaya put her head in her hands – this was going to be tough to explain.

Back at the Garage, Dillon had been attempting to avoid the room he shared with Ziggy all day. This was partly because the younger male had been very tired and claimed to not feel well the night before, so he wanted to let him rest, and partly because Dillon didn't want to end up watching the younger male sleeping.

It was hard for the Black Ranger to admit to himself that he might just like Ziggy a lot more than as a friend or sibling. The younger male was sweet and cute and there were many days where Dillon had to just leave the room they were in because it was too much for him. If he let himself go, the ranger knew he'd end up slamming the younger man into a wall and doing unspeakable things to him.

The fact that they shared a room with beds that tended to be pretty close together was also awkward. Since he'd first had them get Ziggy out of prison, Dillon had had to share a room with him, seeing as the only other spare room would be for the Green Ranger should he arrive and be male. By the time Ziggy ended up becoming Series Green, they were already pretty comfortable with their sleeping arrangements and didn't bother changing.

Ziggy had a problem where he thrashed around a lot as he slept, so his bed was pushed up against the wall. Dillon's was close so he wouldn't fall out on the other side, but not so close as to end up with one or the other getting kicked during a nightmare. The latter claimed to never sleep, which was a load of crap – he just had horrible nightmares a lot when he did sleep, so he was pretty lenient when it came to his roommate's bad dreams and restless sleeping.

The main trouble with sharing a room with the younger man was that there were often nights where Ziggy'd end up cutely nestled in the blankets of Dillon's bed, having crashed there since it was closer. The older man just could not bring himself to stay in the room long with the object of his infatuation curled up and looking adorable in his bed. Occasionally, Ranger Black had had the musing thought that next time he caught Zig in his bed, he'd tell the younger male he was required to share it with him that night. But Dillon was neither that brave nor that cruel and would just go sleep in his car when that happened.

Presently, he noted as he walked past their shared room, that the other young man was still out, and had once again stolen Dillon's bed. A sudden gut feeling told him to go check on his friend and a moment later he was glad he did. Ziggy's skin was flushed with fever and he was breathing raspily, when he breathed at all, which wasn't a good sign.

"Hey, come on, get up." he said, kneeling by the bed and hitting Ziggy's cheek lightly a few times to wake him up. "You need to stay awake right now, Zig, this isn't a joke." he said, but it wasn't doing any good. So, he did what he could think of next – slinging the younger ranger over his shoulder and carrying him downstairs to see Dr. K.

The young Doctor had just been talking to Summer and Tenaya about the tapes and tools they'd received when Dillon came rushing in, a half-dead looking Ziggy over his shoulder. All three women took that moment to note that Ziggy – who was shirtless due to how feverish he'd felt earlier – had a very large bullet wound in his one shoulder that most likely went all the way through to the other side. Dr. K had seen it before when examining him, but always assumed it was a remnant from his time in the cartels.

"Any idea why he's sick like this, Doc?" Dillon's voice swam above Ziggy's head as the young man slowly returned to consciousness.

What looked like a black triangle floating over a mass of white appeared in his slowly clearing vision and he could vaguely make out Dr. K's words as she spoke, "I'm not entirely sure but if the medicine I administered works it'll tell us quite a lot."

"An' how do we know iffit works?" there was Flynn's thick accent somewhere in the background – did he half to talk like that? It was already hard enough to understand people.

The colored blobs that were the Doc paused her movements and her next reply was rather clipped, "He'll actually wake up, Ranger Blue."

"Well then it worked..." the words felt like a brillo pad being rubbed across his throat, but Ziggy tried to force them out for the benefit of his very concerned sounding friends.

Summer's voice and a mass of blonde appeared above him now, thankfully blocking out the very bright light that was making having his eyes open, "Ziggy? Are you feeling any better?"

He tried to force out an answer, eyes screwing up with the effort, "Mm. Things're fuzzy." he slurred, "But s'gettin better."

The combined sigh of relief from his friends was pretty audible and someone grabbed his hand and squeezed it lightly. From the size of the hand, he was pretty sure it was Summer or Tenaya – Dr. K was on the wrong side for it to be her. A dark shadow at the corner of his vision vanished and the doors to the Ranger room opened and shut.

The rest of the group slowly filed out, knowing he was safe, but three people remained and as his vision cleared, Ziggy was easily able to pick out that Dr. K and Tenaya were standing to his one side and Summer was the one holding his hand. She looked relieved when he looked at her and managed a smile, before she turned to ask Dr. K about what the genius had given the boy.

"A rather large dose of the medication produced specifically for early patients of the ACRP."

The rooms occupants stared at her for a moment, but none more than Ziggy. "Whaaaaaaaa? I thought you said the Carp people only futzed with memory of hardcore criminals or people with trauma. I mean, I have a pretty big rap sheet from when I was young but none of it was THAT bad...I don't think."

Dr. K turned to give him a stern look, "You have been behaving like you don't know quite a lot lately, Ranger Green. As if quite a bit of your memories are where you can't access them or have been removed. You have also been displaying the side-effects of people who received this treatment – severe depression that you felt almost forced to hide, extreme highs and lows, decreased mental capacity even when you know you can do better, catastrophic inability to break out of physical patterns, trouble processing situations properly, horrible coordination, reduced stamina, susceptibility towards injury, and a hormonal imbalance that restricts growth and development."

Ziggy stared at her for a bit, blinking repeatedly as he tried to process all the information he'd just been hit with, "So...you're saying that my brain isn't supposed to be fuzzy and gray inside and I'm actually supposed to know a lot more about what's going on than I do?" he got an awkward nod from that before he went on, "And you're saying I look like a twelve-year-old and am a complete fuck up because some government whackjobs went in and fucked with my brain?"

"Pretty much." Dr. K agreed, "I went through the old ACRP files and found not only the schematics for their machines, but lists of the common symptoms to compare to yours. While they were still figuring out what amounts could be safely removed without trouble, many criminals ended up with side effects like the ones you display – they were all just a good deal older and had actually committed major crimes. They also found that after too long without the medication to reduce the side effects, patients would also face relapses and become severely ill the more their old memories and ways were returned to them."

Ziggy flopped back onto the cold metal table he'd been lying on, covering his eyes with one hand. "So you think I was one of their early patients?"

"No, you're too young. However, Dr. McKay told Summer and Tenaya about two of his patients today, one of which was pretty young at the time." she explained, lightly flipping through the box of memory discs on her desk. "Tell me, do you remember how you got that bullet wound in your shoulder? Was it from while you were in the cartel?"

His eyes strayed to the mark on his pale flesh and he shook his head, "Nah. Fresno Bob didn't want me getting into that sort of mess while I was with them, and by the time they wanted me ghosted I had D-I was slightly more protected." he winced a bit, thinking about Dillon protecting him. He'd realized a while ago that was who'd left the room when he woke up. Dillon was still being awkward with him.

"Then that proves it." Tenaya said, "These are yours." she was holding the file Summer and Dillon had found, and the memory disc K had just handed her – both with the name Z. Alexander. Right after it in the file had been one marked K. Alexander.

"It also proves...that you're my elder brother." Dr. K added, looking away from him at this point and lightly fingering the disc she knew was her's.

Ziggy snorted into the back of his hand, reaching out to take the offered files from Tenaya. "Well that much I already had figured."

All three females stared at him that time, "You what?" K asked, blinking.

"I have a picture of us when we were little. It took me a while to recognize you, or to even realize it was a picture of me with my original family and not just some orphans I'd been friends with, but I've had that photograph since I was a kid. I went up to look at it soon as we got back from Attica." Ziggy explained with a smile, reaching into his pocket to pull out a faded and worn image. The edges were torn but there were distinctly two little kids standing in front of a lovely woman with Ziggy's dark curls, and the house that they'd seen on the way back from Attica. Carefully, he held it out to K, who had to go sit down with it for a moment, away from the others.

"The schematics of the machine are enough for us to build one to reverse the process, but we'll need to test it. Since we know for a fact you were a patient and have the discs, you'd be the ideal subject. However, we'll only test it on you if you want us to." Tenaya explained to him quietly, walking over to gently put a hand on her girlfriend's shoulder.

Summer sat quietly by Ziggy and took his hand once more. "No one's forcing you into this, Zig. We all know by now you've been through a lot and you may not want to remember it, particularly how you lost your memories. Don't feel obligated to do any of this for us, okay? Not even Dillon would want his memories back more than he'd want you to be happy. Even if he's having trouble showing it right now, he does care a lot about you." she told her teammate gently, squeezing the hand she held gently.

"We'll give you time to rest and think it over before you answer, all right? I think K needs some time away as well and you're still recovering." Tenaya told him. "It'd be best if we wait anyway."

All Ziggy had the energy to do at that point was nod a bit, squeezing Summer's hand back and forcing a smile. "Thanks."

* * *

GASP! Like you couldn't see that coming halfway through the chapter, if not sooner, right? XD Anyway, I FINALLY BROKE 3K WORDS WITH A CHAPTER! WOO!


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's Note:** Just a lil' fun fanfic I've been talking about with my friends and threw together for them. I apologize if my writing is terrible or my plots are ridiculous.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Power Rangers or any related media or characters. The story idea is my own but the rest isn't. Everything is copyrighted to its respective owners.

If you review, it'll make me smile and I'll try to respond to positive ones or questions here.

**WARNING!:** This fic will contain slash, femslash and possibly even some het (le gasp). Nothing m-rated, mind you, but it will contain pairings. Please keep this in mind. Pairings included are Dillon/Ziggy, Flynn/Gemma, Scott/Summer, Tenaya/Dr. K.

**WARNING 2!: **Contains some spoilers for certain plot points in the series, and is slightly AU. I won't be following the series exactly at some points so you have been warned.

* * *

K had needed several moments to think and maybe even cry before she even wanted to discuss trying to build the memory retriever. By this point, she felt like the weight of the world was crashing down on her shoulders, rather than just resting there like normally. She'd spent so many years believing that whatever family she'd originally had didn't care enough to rescue her from the Soup. Now she didn't quite know what to believe and Ziggy didn't remember enough to tell her different.

For her part, Tenaya at least knew how to be comforting at a time like this. She herself had gotten a revelation of this sort before and knew pretty well what her love was going through, even if a few details were different. She, for one, had also had it revealed that she wasn't a robot and had to come to terms with having attempted to slaughter her own flesh and blood on a daily basis. Dr. K had at least been on the same side as her family, but had thought poorly of them for many years to the point of being cold to a person who strongly reminded her of them. It wasn't as bad by far, but still a bit traumatizing.

The former Attackbot sat in K's desk chair, holding the younger girl to her chest and tracing calming circles on her back. Summer had left a while ago, helping Ziggy back up to his room so he could rest better, and they'd locked up the room, a slightly new feature to the doors to prevent interruption at times like this. The raven haired genius was snuggled up against her girlfriend's chest and trying to calm down after a long bout of tears.

Tenaya patted the younger girl's shoulder a bit after a while of this, "Could be worse," she offered sympathetically with a slight smirk, "You haven't been trying to kill him for the past year and a half."

At this, K let out a small hint of a laugh, "That is a matter of opinion." These small moments together were nice, and they did wonders for her tension, which in turn did wonders for her relationship with the rangers. Scott had even commented she was starting to bark orders less and act more like a person than a test subject. Dr. K would vehemently deny acting like a test subject – but then again, she'd also vehemently deny that she ever 'snuggled', which Tenaya tended to deny as well. Thankfully, only Ziggy and Summer accused them of that so far, and Ziggy hadn't been totally coherent at the time.

Sometime between when they'd left the Ranger Room and started heading towards Ziggy's, he and Summer had a change of plans. The young ranger had had quite enough of resting and being away from people for the present, and he wanted to be able to hang out in the main room thank you very much. So the blonde had escorted him over to the couch and there he sat, talking back and forth with Gem and Gemma, who had managed to find crayons and were attempting to draw with them on large sheets of white paper spread over the coffee table. He'd eventually joined in their fun by making shadow puppets across the paper for them to trace or draw things in response to.

After about a half an hour of this, Ziggy was feeling much better. True, he was still hella weak from that bout of sickness he'd gotten – a major side effect from that treatment, K had said – but he was actually feeling more emotionally stable and happy. Gem and Gemma knew better than to question how he was feeling and had merely asked if he wanted to join their coloring when he'd sat down and just went with whatever it took to cheer him up.

At one point, Scott wandered over to watch over his shoulder. The Red Ranger had meant to make some sort of comment about being glad to see his subordinate feeling better, but ended up just staring in awe as Ziggy made a dragon with his shadows, for which Gem was making rawring sound effects and Gemma was drawing a fiery eyed unicorn to combat it, shouting about vile fiends. And somehow, the only thought that managed to survive in Scott's head at that moment was that he'd never actually gotten to see the younger man's hands when he did those ridiculous puppets and now wondered if maybe he should have taken him up on seeing how he did it before now.

The little gathering turned into a full on party after Flynn wandered over and joined in the awe and confusion. Somehow, things had gone from there to Scott and Flynn joining Ziggy on the couch and half helping in the coloring, and then Summer showed up with a pizza and things got really crazy. It'd have all just been a blur of fun and laughter, but the curly haired puppeteer couldn't help but feel a nagging sadness in the back of his head that Dillon was steadily avoiding the little gathering.

During a point in the evening where everyone was distracted, the green ranger managed to slip away from the others to go check on his partner. Dillon was seated in the Fury and looking sullen, which was something he was almost as good at doing as smirking like a devil. Ziggy was about to open his mouth and ask if he wanted a slice of pizza when the older man stopped him,

"Go away, Ziggy. I don't want to talk to you."

Sighing, the younger ranger rolled his eyes and reached out to lightly smack Dillon's shoulder. "You need to stop assuming things. I know you don't want to talk. I came to see if you were hungry." Honestly, Ziggy had been hoping they were getting past this – the avoiding him for no reason, the being sullen and grouchy alone in the corner, the excessive protection of Tenaya, it had temporarily started to stop back in Attica and yet here he was doing this again. With another roll of his eyes, Ziggy walked off, leaving Dillon to stare after him, wondering vaguely when he'd gotten the balls to dare try and hit him, and why did he have to wear jeans that tight?

The brunette returned after a while with a slice of pizza and a beer for his friend. They kept a few around the building for nights like this, where everyone was in a great mood and Venjix was staying the hell out of everyone's business. There were limits on the alcohol intake the team could have, but so long as they kept it at one per, things were fine.

"You eating out here or are you gonna risk it today?" Ziggy offered, nodding to the slice he'd brought back.

Dillon gave him a dirty look, "Who said I was hungry?" when his response was met with a look his friend had that always gave him an eerie impression that sometimes Ziggy was way smarter than he seemed to be, the older man just sighed, "I'll risk it." the response was a bit less growly as he took the offered dinner and arranged it so he wouldn't mess the inside of his car up too much.

The younger man shook his head a bit, lightly running a hand down the skin of Dillon's arm, which was resting on the edge of the open window, the older man's leather jacket abandoned in the backseat sometime earlier, "I've got a lot to think about tonight." it was a cryptic comment, especially for Ziggy, but something in his features kept Dillon from pressing it. He just carefully turned his arm to catch the former's hand as it slid along his arm.

"Don't do that." it was a short response but not meant to sound angry as he watched their hands for a moment before releasing him and nudging the younger male away from his car. "Good luck with whatever you're thinking about."

Ziggy smiled but said nothing else, heading back to the couch to rejoin his other friends. Tonight he'd have to think about painful memories, things he'd repressed to cope with the fuzziness in his head and how sick he got when things reminded him too much of that fuzziness. He'd already made his decision, whether K would let him tell her yet or not, and whether or not he'd hate himself for it later, Ziggy was prepared to stick with his choice till the bitter end. No matter how painful it was.

Morning came too early and Ziggy sighed as he pulled himself up from where he'd been sleeping. They'd all crashed awkwardly sometime in the night, and most had eventually gotten back up and moved or been moved. Summer had fallen asleep on the armrest, and ended up leaning on Scott, who had been seated on the couch with one arm around her. They'd eventually woken up and wandered to a proper bed, though whose proper bed it was, he couldn't be sure. Gem and Gemma had fallen asleep on the coffee table with their colors still laying about – those had been gathered up and the green ranger vaguely remembered seeing Flynn carrying the two upstairs over his shoulders, a fond grin on the Scotsman's face. Ziggy himself had been curled up on the couch but when he woke up, was in bed again and tucked in. There was no sign of his roommate but it was obvious who'd put him to bed and that made the young man smile just the same.

Downstairs, he had to knock a few times before the door to the Ranger Room was unlocked. It seemed the main team weren't the only ones who had crashed where they were, he observed, spotting a groggy Tenaya – who had pushed the button to let him in – with Dr. K fast asleep on her lap. The young ranger grinned, walking over and lifting up his sister with both arms so her girlfriend could get up from the chair she'd been trapped in all night, albeit willingly.

"I'm becoming increasingly glad I have robotic legs," the former infiltrator joked, standing up and cracking her neck a little bit as she stretched. Ziggy put K back down in the chair again once she was up, but it seemed all the movement had woken the girl anyway. She blinked around, staring at Ziggy's mop of brown hair with confusion.

"How did you get in here?" the words were cut off with a bit of a yawn, K obviously way too content from a good sleep to be fully social.

Tenaya pat her lover's head at that, noticing the younger girl already looking around for her, "I let him in. We didn't go to bed properly last night and left the doors locked."

"Why'd you let him in?"

An exaggerated eyeroll to rival one of her brother's later and Tenaya had reminded her girlfriend that they had needed to get up anyway and Ziggy had a very important decision to give them. K had stared at her for a while before the color drained from the genius's face once more and she remembered just why she had had to curl up on Tenaya and how she'd ended up falling asleep like that. Crying herself to sleep was thankfully something K didn't do often and she didn't exactly like the idea of doing it.

"So have you made your decision Series Gre-Ziggy." both Tenaya and Ziggy had given her a look at that. Before it was okay to be so cold and formal with him, particularly when she might be putting him in a bad position and wanted to be detached but now? Now she wasn't allowed that luxury – he was her family, moreso than before, and all of them knew she'd have to put formality behind her in instances like this.

He nodded and squared his jaw, trying not to let the words bite in his throat too much, "Yes. I'll go through with it. I don't really want to but I will."

There was something about how he said it that made a little buzz start at the back of the doctor's mind. She usually had that buzz when he said certain things that usually floored the rest of the team either with their stupidity or with how seriously he meant them. For once, she didn't suppress that buzz and realized it was a knowledge that she hadn't realized she had about the ranger and his behaviors.

"You didn't even have to think it over did you? You knew from the moment we said what we were going to do what your answer was." she stared at him open mouthed for a moment after saying this, having just been hit in the face very hard with a realization about his character. He wasn't STUPID, he was EMOTIONAL. Ziggy wasn't just deciding crap like this because he didn't think through the options – he didn't have to think about the options because he knew what he was choosing already, regardless of what he thought. He cared about them and therefore would do whatever it took to help them, no matter how bad it was. Somehow, the genius wondered very much if being emotional wasn't worse than being stupid – at least then you'd have an excuse for bad decisions.

Ziggy leaned forward to smile at her brightly, a real smile not one of the fake ones he pulled to keep from breaking down, "Nice of you to finally notice, Doc."

The machine didn't take too many days to build, surprisingly. Dr. K had already had a prototype she'd been working on in the lab for a while, making no progress. The schematics from the Project were enough for her to correct the design and get it working. Before the testing, she gave Ziggy the option of telling the others what was going on. Summer already knew and was staying nearby in case anything bad happened, but the rest of the group was thankfully oblivious. When the procedure went on, K would have to watch the machine as it worked, making sure it didn't hit any blocks in Ziggy's mind with too much trouble. It was a complicated and bizarre explanation for how the machine worked, but essentially it all had to do with the memory discs actually just containing diagrams of where memories were removed, how much was taken and footage of the procedure for records, and K having to follow that to reverse engineer the process. However, what it meant was that the others would be able to see fast motion clips of a lot of his more painful memories as they were uncovered, if they were present for the proceedings.

In the end, he'd resolved to let Dr. K tell the others of their findings, unable to muster up the courage to say it all himself, and for once, no one blamed him. Scott took the information with a quiet acceptance and a good deal of restraint, Flynn just stared with a dropped jaw and wide eyes, and the twins seemed eager to bounce over and hug Ziggy, who just smile and let them. Only Dillon had taken things badly, clenching his fists and leaving the room in a huff to lean against a wall outside. Tenaya had noted with great interest the way the former youngest ranger followed Dillon's retreating back with his eyes and a soft expression before turning away to smile at Gemma, who was petting his hair nervously and Gem who was gripping his arm maybe a bit too hard.

It was finally decided that the whole team would try to be present and supportive for the procedure, but if anything came up, Ziggy was to stay with Dr. K and Tenaya while the rest of the team handled it. That was for the best, since they had no idea how his current side effects would work with the memory retrieval – whether they'd lesson or get worse – and whether stopping in the middle to go fight Venjix might permanently scar his brain worse than before. So with that matter settled and the date set, they merely had to wait, worry and hope for the best.


	8. Chapter 8

**Author's Note:** Just a lil' fun fanfic I've been talking about with my friends and threw together for them. I apologize if my writing is terrible or my plots are ridiculous.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Power Rangers or any related media or characters. The story idea is my own but the rest isn't. Everything is copyrighted to its respective owners.

If you review, it'll make me smile and I'll try to respond to positive ones or questions here.

**WARNING!:** This fic will contain slash, femslash and possibly even some het (le gasp). Nothing m-rated, mind you, but it will contain pairings. Please keep this in mind. Pairings included are Dillon/Ziggy, Flynn/Gemma (and apparently Gem too O.o), Scott/Summer, Tenaya/Dr. K.

**WARNING 2!: **Contains some spoilers for certain plot points in the series, and is slightly AU. I won't be following the series exactly at some points so you have been warned.

* * *

Everyone acted weird towards Ziggy on the days before Dr. K was scheduled to try the memory retriever on him. The whole team seemed jumpy and treated him almost like glass. Scott and Flynn talked quietly when they were around him, Gem and Gemma seemed to want to play more (their way of being gentle, he guessed), and Dillon wouldn't even stay in the building so long as Ziggy was up and about. He might have protested all of this delicacy more, but Ziggy was pretty damn down himself.

The Green Ranger was hit hard by his best friend's absence. The entire macho-avoidance thing had been ticking him off but more and more it was just making him sad. When everyone was out or busy, Ziggy would find time to sneak into the Fury and curl up in the passenger's seat. It was a very risky move, particularly since Dillon was more likely to come home if he didn't see the other around and if he caught the younger ranger in his car Ziggy doubted he'd live to test the machine.

He was caught eventually, but not by the sibling he thought. He woke up from one of his little sneaking naps to Tenaya's amused face at the window he'd climbed into. She rolled her eyes and ruffled his hair when he woke up enough to realize it was her, and received a light bat away from doing so. Only Dillon really got to screw with his hair, whether he said so or not.

"You know he's gonna kill you when he catches you, right?" she asked, not entirely serious.

"Eeeeeeeee-yep." Ziggy agreed, blowing his bangs out of his face and sitting back a bit. "Then again, the procedure might too so I figured I'd take my chance now while I still can."

Her gaze softened at that and for a second, the young man was amazed at how much emotion those robotic eyes could convey, "You really like him, don't you?" she asked, fully aware of that longing that came from caring deeply for someone who was technically off limits for relationships. After all, she'd been K's enemy for the longest time, and Ziggy was Dillon's best friend and roommate.

The ranger snorted, shaking his head, surprising Tenaya a bit, "Nah, I don't like him." All comments she might have been about to give her cut off when he turned to face her, however, and those soft brown eyes with their unshed tears glistened back at her, "I stopped liking him long ago, around the time I fell in love with him."

"So you're risking death by sitting in his car days before risking death to test a machine that'll give him back what he lost?"

Ziggy raised a brow at her, "I'm doing it for you and K too." he pointed out, but didn't deny the rest of it.

Tenaya smiled and nodded, patting his shoulder, "Enjoy your nap. I'll keep an eye out for Dillon and let you know if he shows up early."

The day they'd all been dreading arrived all too soon and Ziggy found himself strapped to a table in the Doc's lab, a weird machine hooked up to his head. Summer stood nearby, holding his hand again, Scott's arm around her shoulders as they waited for things to begin. Flynn was nearby with Gem and Gemma, occasionally arguing with the former about something or another, and receiving giggles from the latter, at which point Dr. K would give the three a dirty look and they'd quiet down again for a bit.

At some point or another, Ziggy registered that Tenaya was talking to him, asking him how he felt and marking things on a little technopad of some sort for K. He didn't recall his answer but was pretty sure he'd just ended up asking if Dillon had bothered to show up, and receiving a sigh and a no for an answer. Oh well, he hadn't expected the older man to show, so whatever right?

The ranger wasn't quite sure when the procedure would actually start so he was content to try and talk to the others, cheer them into smiles maybe. Being held down and poked with machine bits like this was weird and he desperately wanted to think about anything other than that, than what he'd be remembering soon, than the fact that the one person he wanted there above all else wasn't going to be. He had been about to shout over to Flynn and ask what they were arguing over when a sharp jolt of pain laced through him, ripping a scream from his mouth as violent images and painful sensations racked is body.

The screen before them flashed image after image of getting beaten up by members of the cartels after joining, fights as a power ranger that had damaged him more than he wanted to let on, long nights of staying up with psychosis caused by that horrible fuzzy gray patch in his brain, and so many other things. Somewhere during this, came images of a nice seeming family with a small house and a picket fence. The mother gave Ziggy pills and tried to keep him from being depressed, told him to smile and go outside to play. The scenes were quick and short, soon replaced by a horrible car crash and a funeral, his last family's final resting place.

Somewhere in the blur of images flooding his head and the pain from the electric shocks the machine was giving him as it tunneled through his mind, Ziggy was pretty sure he heard someone asking Dr. K a question, shouting loudly to be heard over the screams and mechanical noises. But maybe the screams were just loud in his head, because the ranger was pretty sure his throat didn't work anymore.

"I thought you said this testing was going after stuff that Project thing did to him!" Scott shouted, trying not to look at his teammate for fear of being sick. This was horrific for all of them to watch. Ziggy was strapped down and letting out silent screams as the machine zapped him and flashed images of horrible things they hadn't even realized were that traumatic at the time.

Dr. K nodded, lip stiff, "Yes, Ranger Series Red, but it has to go through the things he repressed on his own to get at that. He's been having to force down a lot of memories on his own to keep from experiencing symptoms of being reminded of things. You saw how sick he got after the trip to Attica – if he remembered too much on his own, without the medication to stop the effects, he became physically ill." she was obviously just as troubled by what was going on as the rest of them.

As they began to break through the fuzzy gray, images started to form clearer and slower, the machine having to break down more walls to get at them. Things were choppy and not quite chronological, so they just had to hope for an explanation later, because right now nothing made sense and Ziggy was in no state to be telling them what the hell was going on.

As they started to break through yet another deep barrier in his mind, the alarms blared. There had been a shield breach and the team had had to dash off. Ziggy was aware enough at this point, having gotten used to the machine, to see the blaring lights and know where his friends were going. The other rangers dashed off, and Ziggy could vaguely see Tenaya pacing around nervously overhead. What was going on? Time seemed to jump in sections as more and more of his mind became uncovered and he shifted in and out of consciousness. However, something was definitely wrong, he could feel it in the atmosphere of the room and tried to tune into what it was.

Just like his first day in the Garage, the comlink was blaring a deadly fight. Venjix may not have been at full strength again but he had sent one hell of an Attackbot as retaliation for what they'd done. It was tough as hell and the team was down one member among other things. Ziggy could hear Dr. K yelling at Tenaya that she wasn't ready to go out into this alone and decided to take matters into his own hands before things got worse. With surprising swiftness and accuracy, he ripped the cords from his head and sat up.

"Come on, 'Aya." he commanded, snatching his morpher off of K's worktable and heading for the door. The doctor was staring at him in horror and shouting that he might have just caused irreversible damage to his brain. Tenaya was following after, meanwhile, quite surprised and amused by this turn of events. Right now she needed to help the others and Ziggy did too, so they were on the same page once more.

Outside, she realized one major problem. "How the hell are we getting to that part of the city? We can't just run there and I doubt you'd be able to fight if we teleport the-are you hotwiring Gem's new car?"

The gold ranger and his sister had each gotten cars for their birthday – both of which were upgraded by Flynn as an extra special present to the pair – but they weren't quite ready to be used on missions yet and had been left at the shop. As Gem's was the first he'd seen, Ziggy'd already gotten it open and had started to mess with it.

"Yes actually I am." he stated cheerily, tossing open the door for her once he had the engine started. "A little trick I learned from your brother and quite possibly may have learned before I met him." There was a strange look in the young man's eyes and Tenaya decided it was best to not argue as she hopped in and they sped off.

As they sped along the streets, she smirked, "I thought you were incapable of properly operating a motorized vehicle?" knowing at this point she'd thought wrong but hoping for an answer just the same.

Ziggy's grin was wild and manic, "Nope. I just failed the test five times. I've been able to drive since I was ten." he told her as they swerved around a corner and slid into the spot right next to where the rest of the team's cars were parked. He had missed being able to do this, even if he hadn't remembered before now that he could.

The group was engaged in the fight against a bunch of grinders as well as the new Attackbot, General Crunch and General Shifter. While they could easily take out a bunch of grinders – particularly quickly cobbled together ones made from out of use parts on older models – two generals and a high power Attackbot required a good bit more help, which had just arrived.

Everyone seemed to stop as they spotted the car, Gem and Gemma sounding quite surprised when they saw the car, apparently not knowing it was drivable yet. When Ziggy and Tenaya hopped out, they were met with even greater surprise, particularly since neither of them were supposed to be out fighting.

The pair morphed quickly and Dillon groaned audibly, realizing at that moment that Dr. K and Tenaya had pulled a fast one on him, giving his sister the spare morpher they'd been building and doing so behind his back. The rest of the team cheered, however, very glad for the extra help from Series Green and the brand new Series Purple.

"Did you miss us?" Ziggy joked pleasantly before he dove into the fight and seemed to be handling himself way better than usual. It seemed whatever had been holding him back in his lessons was mostly gone as his fighting prowess had jumped through the roof, the skills of a year and a half's worth of training finally getting to show through. Tenaya, meanwhile, still had her badass skills that had always kept her in step with the rangers during fights, but now they were augmented by the Series Purple powers, giving her added protection and energy as well.

With 9 rangers present, the grinders were destroyed rather quickly but there was still the Attackbot. Crunch and Shifter tried to go head to head with the team for a while but eventually retreated before they ended up as scrap metal yet again. It was time to combine weapons to blast this thing to kingdom come, but Ziggy was beginning to falter. K was shouting something through the com-link but it was no use. The adrenaline rush that had been keeping him up and able to work despite cutting the procedure off in the middle was starting to lose out. He'd been able to summon the turbo axe to combine with Dillon's weapon but he was already starting to shake and stagger, the world becoming blurry.

When he woke up, Ziggy was strapped down to the table once more and his vision was still blurry as Dr. K shaped blobs of color started replacing the cords in his head. "Deja vu." he mumbled lightly, trying to make out the scene over his head.

"Are all elder brothers reckless stubborn fools, or was I just so lucky as to get an elder brother very similar to another team member's?" K grumbled irritably, but she seemed happy to have him awake.

Ziggy snorted, "Dillon's not reckless and stubborn cause he's an elder brother. S'just how their family is – 'Aya has it too. You just got stuck with a weirdo s'all." he tried to smile a bit but it hurt to do so and so did keeping his eyes open. Once again someone was holding his hand and he was pretty sure the rest of the team had gathered around him like before.

"Nice of you to insult me after I come back to see you." came the man's amused voice from beside Ziggy and the hand holding his squeezed it gently. Right about then the younger male noticed the dark shadow next to him and the callouses and blistered on the hand holding his.

The Green Ranger managed to make the smile thing work at that point, trying to squeeze back a little, "I get to insult you, you've been being a lot less than nice to me lately." his voice sounded crackly and awkward but he tried to make it obvious that he was joking just the same. Dillon's presence meant a lot to him.

Dillon nodded a bit, looking sort of sad, "I know, and I'm sorry. I've been being an ass."

Ziggy noticed where this was headed and immediately squeezed the other man's hand again, forcing another dopey grin, "Don't worry, we're even. I've been breaking into your car to nap for over a week now."

Dillon rolled his eyes and reached out his free hand to ruffle Ziggy's hair – which was hard to do when the one was laying down and had all sorts of wires in his head that couldn't be disturbed. "I know."

"Then how am I not dead yet?"

"Because Dr. K wanted to kill you first and I have to kill her and Tenaya so I figured I'd let you wait in line a bit." the black ranger seemed wary of the button pushing K was doing over at the machine, wanting to hold onto Ziggy the way he was for as long as possible. Whatever came after this would change him, whether for better or worse, and Dillon wasn't sure if he was ready for that.

The ranger leaned back on the table a bit, closing his eyes and trying not to move too much as more pushing and prodding prepared him for their attempt at finishing the procedure, "I'm amazed there's not more people waiting to kill me, what with stealing Gem's car to get to the fight. How'd that go, by the way?" he remembered summoning his weapon and then everything had gone from fuzzy to black.

Dillon's quiet tone continued, though Ziggy had long since begun to pick up on the worry in his voice, "After you passed out, Doc had to assure us you were still alive then Tenaya decided to grab your axe and help me combine with the others since she hasn't got one and you were down for the count."

Trying to make light of the situation, the younger man spoke again, "You aren't allowed to go replacing me just yet. I may turn out to be a better partner yet." the comment light and airy, though he really did half hope he'd get to stay working with the older man and not get replaced after their new ranger proved more competent.

"What and get to miss out on seeing how much you've improved without most of your brain in pieces?" there was a seriousness to his answer that was kind of cute, but Ziggy didn't have time to think about it, noticing Dillon's hand clench once more as that telltale pain started up again and memories began to flood him once more. But all through it, he could still feel the one he loved sitting nearby and protecting him.


	9. Epilogue

**Author's Note:** Just a lil' fun fanfic I've been talking about with my friends and threw together for them. I apologize if my writing is terrible or my plots are ridiculous.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Power Rangers or any related media or characters. The story idea is my own but the rest isn't. Everything is copyrighted to its respective owners.

If you review, it'll make me smile and I'll try to respond to positive ones or questions here.

**WARNING!:** This fic will contain slash, femslash and possibly even some het (le gasp). Nothing m-rated, mind you, but it will contain pairings. Please keep this in mind. Pairings included are Dillon/Ziggy, Flynn/Gemma, Scott/Summer, Tenaya/Dr. K.

**WARNING 2!:** Contains some spoilers for certain plot points in the series, and is slightly AU. I won't be following the series exactly at some points so you have been warned.

Epilogue, what? Thank you so much to everyone who's stuck it out and read this 3 I hope you've all enjoyed yourselves.

* * *

The procedure worked, at least and after whole lot of bed rest – in his own bed thankfully – Ziggy was able to start thinking correctly again. It was kind of scary, as he'd told Dillon when he'd first woken up, the older man staying nearby to make sure he was safe and sleeping well. The sudden lucidity and the lack of gray fuzzy sections to his brain was weird and he'd almost had a meltdown just from the realization that his brain was now fully open to him including everything he'd ever tried to forget. However, the moment he started wavering, Dillon'd enveloped him in an embrace that was surprisingly gentle for someone that strong, and after a lot of comfort the younger male was finally able to start getting used to his brain again.

The side effects, he was told, would take a while to leave. Ziggy was required to take some of the medication now and again to keep from having any breakdowns, though the ranger claimed Dillon was much better medicine when that happened. Seeing as curling into the older man's arms or in the Fury while Dillon worked was the only way Ziggy could sleep in recent days, people were inclined to believe him just a bit. Dillon himself would just smirk at this and ruffle Ziggy's hair a bit, much to the annoyance of the latter who claimed it hurt his head.

It was a few months before the team was able to fully sit down and talk about Ziggy's past with him, It took so long not only because he had a lot to come to terms with, but also because Venjix was still putting up a meager fight as he rebuilt himself slowly, so they still had to work on defending the city. When they did all get together, the atmosphere of the room felt different than it had that night before Ziggy'd made his decision, and yet it still felt like that warm, gentle family feeling.

Flynn was seated on the floor between Gem and Gemma, the Scotsman rolling his eyes at their wide-eyed cute expressions and frequently having to pull them back and stop them from asking silly questions too early. Scott and Summer were once again on the couch, but this time the blonde was in his lap rather than on the arm, and a telltale ring on her finger was a happy reminder for all of the group of a very amusing and heartwarming proposal they'd helped with during a fight one day.

Ziggy himself was resting against Dillon's chest, the two curled on their end of the couch. The Red and Black rangers kept jokingly arguing about who had the better date, but said dates were managing to keep them quiet. The whole group was waiting for Dr. K and Tenaya to come out and Ziggy was very amused by how most still hadn't realized why it was taking so long.

When Dr. K did show up at this pajama party of sorts, it was easy to note something was off about her. While yes, she was wearing her slippers and had tousled hair, the young doctor seemed to have forgotten she wasn't wearing her own nightclothes. Something Dillon was quick to pick up on with a good deal of shock and disbelief.

"Doc isn't that...isn't that Tenaya's nightgown?" he said, pointing to the sheer purple dress he often scolded his sister for even owning – what did she need with something like that anyway?

K looked down and her attire and promptly blushed a lot. "Good question, Series Black, we shall have to further investigate your hypothesis." the quick and smart sounding reply came from behind the girl before she could speak as her ex-Attackbot girlfriend entered wearing little more than K's labcoat, which – while it usually swam on the very small genius – was rather tight on her curvacious figure.

Dillon let out an exasperated groan, akin to the one he'd let out when he found out his sister was a ranger. "Why did I have to get the little sister who can't behave?" The room was filled with laughter at that as Tenaya dragged K off so they could both get dressed better and the pair returned in their proper Pjs.

Things settled down once more and all eyes turned to Ziggy, making the young man a bit uncomfortable. "Well, go on." K instructed, looking pouty from the beanbag chair she and 'Aya had taken up on the floor.

He blushed sheepishly before nodding, "Right, yeah. So um...I guess I should start at the beginning huh?"

"Sounds abou' right to me, it does." Flynn added, which earned him a very loud shush from Gem and Gemma in unison – though given their smiles, it was probably meant in fun.

Ziggy rolled his eyes and tried to think back to where things had really begun. It'd been a long time since he'd known but now it was becoming clearer. "I guess things started where I was born. My parents were pretty cool – my dad worked in science for the government and my mom ran a daycare. I had two older siblings – Nikki and Jonie. Mom and Dad named me Ziggy because they thought it sounded nice and my grandparents never did leave them alone about it. They had plans to name any young sibling I ended up with 'Izzy' or something like that but Gran got them to change it to something more respectable at the last minute."

"My little sister, Katarina Isabella or Kitty, as I called her, was a whole hell of a lot smarter than I was. We got along well enough, for the most part – we'd fight over things like who got the last cookie, or whether or not comic books and math were dumb, and we'd do nice stuff for each other too, like her helping me with homework sometimes or me doing shadow puppets to make her laugh when she got scared during thunderstorms. Nikki was in middle school already when we came along, and Jonie was getting ready to graduate high school."

"When she was about four or five, some crazy place found out how smart she was and took her away. Mom and Dad had been the encouraging sort and let her read as much as she wanted when they found out she was interested in concepts like advanced science and computer programming. Those people took advantage of that and snatched her up, making excuses for why they took her."

A haunted look at started to enter Ziggy's eyes as he remembered back to the night it'd happened, "Mom and Dad didn't want them to take her. We'd all been home to celebrate Jonie getting accepted to a really good college. Kitty went out in the morning to ride her bike and never came home. Instead, those people showed up, claiming they'd found her and had discovered she was one of several children across the country suffering from a strange and deadly sun allergy. Needless to say, my family didn't buy the bullshit, so the agents did the next best thing they could in that situation: They took out guns and systematically executed each member of the family, right down to me."

A gasp of horror was heard but Ziggy didn't open his eyes to see who it was. His fists had clenched and Dillon had started holding him just a bit tighter. "They said I was important – if she needed any transplants or anything, I was the right type for her. Bastards took me to and orphanage and said I was emotionally disturbed, had the government clean up the mess so it looked like I really was. They thought they could get away with it, but they couldn't."

"No family would take me, being as disturbed and dangerous as I was, so I did things on my own. I tried to help out with the other orphans, but we needed money so I joined up with some of the street punks who ran gangs in the area. A few of the boys had dads in the cartels so I was able to learn the ropes of that business and steal to help out as best I could. I was learning plenty of useful stuff – pickpocketing, lockpicking, how to drive – and it was paying off too."

It was hard to continue and there was a weight on his chest as the next scenes came to his mind, of the fateful incidents that lead to him losing his memory to begin with. "I learned how to bargain real good from working with punks and thugs. I did small jobs for them or their cartel fathers, and they'd get me information and I wanted that badly. They managed to get me the lowdown on the government group that nabbed Kitty – a group called Alphabet Soup. When I found out where their main base was located – so close to the city – I started working on a way to try and get her out of there."

"It took a lot of minor break-ins and research to figure out where my sister was even being kept. It wasn't hard to figure out which little girl of just the right age was her – they weren't that creative with their designations and just took the first letter of her name to use. I found out where she was being kept and drove a car through the building to try and rescue her."

Ziggy leaned back lightly on Dillon's shoulder as he thought about the next part. The group had remained pretty silent throughout the story and for that he was grateful – he didn't want to stop and think about answering questions just yet, things were choppy enough as it was. "When I got to her, she looked a wreck. Pale and skinny and they didn't even bother keeping her hair cut right. Stuck in a stupid concrete room, nothing but a stool and a chalkboard with equations, it was disgusting," Doctor K flinched at that point, remembering her cell very well, "I tried to reason with her, get her to come with me, but she didn't even know who I was and kept insisting she couldn't go outside yet because the sun still made her sick."

His shoulder throbbed as he got to the next part and he touched it instinctively, looking over at the spot on his shirt that covered the bullet wound. "Next thing I knew there was a bang behind me and she was splattered with blood, just like I had been that very first night." Ziggy shuddered, "They dragged me off to some dark lab where an old guy stuck pins in me and futzed around with my head."

"After that, I didn't remember much. I knew the old guy felt sorry for me – he tried to help me get in and get my file back. They'd been keeping me on pills for the treatment at the orphanage but they couldn't keep me out of trouble. I managed to get out and sneak into the ACRP's storage room just like planned, but they knew I was coming. Those Soup people sent me back to the orphanage where they paid a couple from out of town to take me away and keep me on the medication."

Ziggy was getting tired, but he was reaching the end of the story at least, "Things were normal for a while and I really was starting forget, but then there was an accident. I wasn't supposed to be anywhere near cars or allowed to drive since that was one of the major memories they'd removed from my head. My new family didn't listen to the doctors though and took me out for a drive. I started to get sick again, beginning to remember, so they were a bit distracted with me and didn't see the truck in time to swerve. When I woke up, they were dead and I knew somehow that those Soup people would find me a new family very quickly that would keep me under control, so I ran away."

"I sneaked out of the funeral party and hid out with some of my old punk friends. Those doctors hadn't removed too many memories of my old friends because they weren't relevant to my break-ins at the Soup building, and I had time to remeet everyone after I was released. These friends helped me escape and one of their Dad's – Benny – helped me get in with Fresno Bob since that was about the only job that'd take me, seeing as most people thought I was disturbed and dangerous, and if not, they thought I was incompetent and stupid from the side-effects of the treatment. I had no other options, so I stuck with them and helped out at the orphanage in my spare time. It was all I had left and it's all I had when I came to Corinth."

The room was dead quiet as he finished, and the others looked confused as to whether or not to speak or change the subject. Dillon solved that matter by standing up, lifting Ziggy lightly in his arms. "Okay, that's enough of storytime. You're going to bed and everyone else can finish their party in peace." he told the younger man before heading for the stairs.

Tenaya rolled her eyes, reaching out to take a carton of the Chinese food that'd been untouched in front of everyone since the story started. "He's such a hopeless romantic somedays." And that was enough for the others to break out laughing and go back to their pleasant party.

Upstairs, Ziggy was curling up in Dillon's bed where he'd been set down. The older man was lightly pulling the covers up over his friend and trying to be at least sort of comforting about it.

"Mm, you do realize this one's your bed, right?" Ziggy mumbled, not really complaining. Dillon's bed was perfectly nice – it was just as comfortable as his own, but it smelled of his friend and tended to always feel more comforting somehow.

Dillon smirked, "Yeah and? You don't seem to mind and if I'm going to stay with you, I want to stay in my own bed." he commented, climbing in beside his teammate and new boyfriend, snaking his arms slowly around Ziggy and letting the younger male get comfortable against him.

Curling in close, the Green Ranger smiled, "You're awfully affectionate tonight." this was nice, getting to curl up together like this. It was comforting and that was pretty nice.

"Well I'm in a good mood. You just proved it's possible for someone to recover their memories and former lives somewhat, and I didn't even have to take medicine because of how mine were so there's hope." there was something warm and gentle about the smile he gave Ziggy in return, his words said with an almost tender note to them. But this was Dillon and Dillon was a tad too macho for that.

Ziggy smirked, "Whatever you say. I think you're just enjoying having a boyfriend and don't want to admit it." he teased, leaning up for a goodnight kiss before snuggling down to sleep. This had been a nerve-wracking trip but he was glad for it just the same. After all, now he had all of his memories, a wonderful boyfriend, and two sisters, one by blood and one by relationship. And that was all Ziggy could ask for in the end.

* * *

THE END! Sorry if this wasn't as good as anyone hoped. But anyway yay, done! And in less than a week too!


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